Beaverton, Ore.-Digimarc Corporation (NASDAQ: DMRC) today introduced Digimarc Document Inspector, a software application that works with a variety of scanning devices to significantly improve inspection of driver licenses and other government-issued citizen IDs.

The primary means of inspecting IDs today is mere visual examination. Digimarc Document Inspector takes the guesswork out of inspection and provides reliable authentication of driver licenses and IDs for Departments of Motor Vehicles and other ID issuers, law enforcement, TSA, border crossing agents, retailers and others who rely on inspection of IDs. Document Inspector scans and instantly validates common ID security features such as 2D barcodes, magnetic stripes and digital watermarks found in tens of millions of circulating driver licenses.

Digital watermarking has been proven as an effective cross-jurisdictional security feature, giving anyone who inspects government-issued IDs confidence in the authenticity of the document being presented. The Nebraska Department of Motor Vehicles recently ordered Digimarc Document Inspector following the State’s successful Department of Transportation-funded pilot on ID authentication (visit www.digimarc.com/media/release.asp?newsID=475).

“With more than 240 valid driver license designs for the millions of licenses circulating in the U.S., visual inspection is not adequate to determine the authenticity of these IDs,” said J. Scott Carr, executive vice president, Digimarc. “We developed Digimarc Document Inspector to help inspectors quickly and easily authenticate IDs and stop fake IDs from being used to purchase age-controlled products, perpetrate identity crimes or illegally cross borders.”

The ability to authenticate digitally watermarked IDs was recently highlighted in a CBS Evening News story on border security, demonstrating the effectiveness of such solutions in detecting fake IDs presented to cross U.S. borders (visit www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/08/01/eveningnews/main1857671.shtml).

For driver license issuers, Digimarc Document Inspector is cost effective, quick and easy to use and takes up minimal counter space. Jurisdictions that need to validate a broader range of proof-of-identity documents and meet REAL ID requirements for document archiving can upgrade to the Digimarc Document Authentication solution.

Key features and benefits of Digimarc Document Inspector include: –Instant authentication of driver licenses and IDs to confidently validate more than 240 forms of U.S. driver licenses. –Easy to implement and use, providing a clear visual Pass/Fail result that immediately lets a user know if an ID is authentic.
–Works with a range of scanning devices. –Supports validation of barcodes, magnetic stripes, and the 35+ million (and growing) U.S. driver licenses secured with Digimarc IDMarc digital watermarks. –Provides reliable, cross-jurisdictional authentication.

Document Inspector is available directly from Digimarc or from VARs via easy-to-deploy developer kits. For more information about Digimarc Document Inspector, please visit: www.digimarc.com/document_inspector.