For our December 2013 issue, we return to the topic of watermarking. We had last covered recent patents in the area of watermarking in November 2011. Below, we consider several recent inventions in which specific information is embedded in a wide variety of media: images, video, audio, and even computer programs. Number: US 8,589,148 Title: Natural language watermarking Inventors: M. Atallah, S. Bangalore, D. Hakkani-Tur, G. Riccardi, M. Topkara and U. Topkara Issued: November 19, 2013 Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property II, L.P. (Atlanta, GA) Purdue Research Foundation (West Lafayette, IN) Number: US 8,588,462 Title:  Video watermarking with fast detection Inventors: J.Moorer Issued: November 19, 2013 Assignee:  Adobe Systems Incorporated (San Jose, CA) Number: US 8,565,473 Title:  Noise influenced watermarking methods and apparatus Inventors: T. Rodriguez, R. Brundage Issued: October 22, 2013 Assignee:  Digimarc Corporation (Beaverton, OR) Number: US 8,553,881 Title:  Composite masking system and method for improving invisibility of high-definition video watermarking Inventors: H. K. Lee, T. W. Oh, K. S. Kim, J. W. Lee, H. D. Kim. Issued:October 8, 2013 Assignee:  Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) (Daejeon, Korea) Number: US 8,489,883 Title:  Virtual world embedded security watermarking Inventors: R. Dettinger, L. Do, F. Kulack, K. Paterson Issued: July 16, 2013 Assignee:  International Business Machines Corporation (Armonk, NY) Number: US 8,488,900 Title:  Identifying and redressing shadows in connection with digital watermarking and fingerprinting Inventors: W. Conwell Issued: July 16, 2013 Assignee:  Digimarc Corporation (Beaverton, OR) Number: US 8,477,991 Title:  Method for watermarking free view video with blind watermark detection Inventors: G. Doerr, S. Baudry, J. Franco-Contreras Issued: July 2, 2013 Assignee:  Thomson Licensing (Issy-les-Moulineaux, France) Number: US 8,458,476 Title:  Watermarking computer program code Inventors: B. Johansson Issued: June 4, 2013 Assignee:  Telefonaktiebolaget L M Ericsson (Publ) (Stockholm, Sweden) Number: US 8,369,562 Title:  Encryption methods for patterned media watermarking Inventors: T. Albrecht, Z. Bandic, J. Campello de Souza Issued: February 5, 2013 Assignee:  Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Amsterdam, The Netherlands). Number: US 8,355,910 Title:  Methods and apparatus for audio watermarking a substantially silent media content presentation Inventors: F. McMillan, I. Kilian, J. Stephen Issued: January 15, 2013 Assignee:  The Nielsen Company (US), LLC (Schaumburg, IL). If you have an interesting patent to share when we next feature patents related to watermarking, or if you are especially interested in a signal processing research field that you would want to be highlighted in this section, please send email to Shantanu Rane (rane AT merl DOT com).