Addendum to last posting (Gates/Corbis)

It is also mentioned that "Corbis has stepped up enforcing its own intellectual property rights. Corbis helped create a digital watermark process to track where each of its images appears on the Internet, and it sues people who intentionally use them without permission. The program searches the Web and compiles a list of infringements. Corbis senior corporate counsel Dave Green found 124 Web sites using the company's images without permission in February. Last year, Corbis collected $1.6 million from legal action against infringers."
It would be interesting to see if this "program" is only able to pick up images provided with that Corbis watermark or not. Otherwise they would be competitors of LTU (yesterday, the FBI selected LTU technologies for image-based investigation) and of course of PicScout.