Printed Image Inventory Authentication With Hash and Blockchain
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing technologies lack a mechanism to efficiently produce physical prints from digital images while ensuring the authenticity and provenance of the extracted frames from digital videos or still photographs, particularly in verifying the integrity and origin of the printed images.
Innovation Solution
A system that includes a physical print production and packaging machine equipped with a metadata unit for assigning provenance, a hash unit for generating cryptographic hashes, and a watermark unit for protecting the images, integrated with a blockchain for secure and transparent authentication and storage.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If physical prints are produced from digital images without verification mechanisms, then production efficiency is improved, but authenticity and provenance cannot be guaranteed
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by generating cryptographic hashes of digital images and storing them in blockchain before physical printing occurs. This advance verification setup ensures authenticity can be confirmed without slowing down the actual printing process, resolving the contradiction between production efficiency and authenticity verification.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces cryptographic hash values and blockchain technology as intermediary elements between the digital image and physical print. These intermediaries serve as trusted mediators that verify authenticity without requiring direct intervention in the printing process, maintaining both efficiency and reliability.
2Reliability
If cryptographic hashing and blockchain verification are implemented for each print, then authenticity is ensured, but production complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The verification functionality is extracted as separate, modular units (hash generation unit, blockchain interaction unit) that operate independently from the main printing system. This extraction reduces complexity by isolating the verification mechanism, allowing it to be implemented without fundamentally redesigning the entire printing system.
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of verifying each physical print individually through complex processes, the system creates a digital copy (cryptographic hash) of the image data and stores it on blockchain. This copying approach simplifies verification by working with data representations rather than physical objects, reducing system complexity while maintaining reliability.
3Reliability
If metadata and cryptographic information are embedded in each print, then provenance is tracked, but manufacturing time increases
Solution Approach 1:
Metadata and cryptographic information are prepared and attached to digital images before the printing process begins. This preliminary preparation ensures that provenance tracking data is ready in advance, eliminating delays during actual manufacturing and resolving the time loss issue.
Solution Approach 2:
The system maintains continuous useful action by performing hash generation and metadata attachment in parallel with image processing operations. This continuous operation ensures that provenance tracking is established without interrupting or significantly extending the manufacturing workflow, minimizing time loss.
Data Source
AI summary
There are disclosed methods and apparatus for manufacture of prints produced and packaged from image inventories. A physical print production and packaging machine assigns metadata to each physical print of a frame of a digital video work. It takes objects that have been detected, recognized and assigned metadata to the objects by the frame slicing and packaging machine and detects, recognizes and assigns new items of metadata to objects that are unique to the physical print. The print production and packaging machine then generates a cryptographic hash of the physical print's digital file. Lastly, the print production and packaging machine writes the hash to a node of a transaction processing network.