Patent 7120274 was granted and assigned to Shutterfly, Inc. on October, 2006 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A computer-assisted method for detecting copyright protection in digital images receives a digital image, searches for capture device information associated with the digital image, calculates one or more image characteristics of the digital image, and verifies copyright ownership and usage authorization of the digital image in response to the capture device information and the calculated image characteristics.