I worked with some of the most prominent British scientists in the field of holography to develop and establish a holographic-based encryption standard for CDs, DVDs and other electronic publishing devices which are currently the target of large scale organised piracy. It has successfully resulted in the actual and proposed filings of several British and European patents covering the application of the holographic technology to the watermarking and digital copy-protection of data storage devices. My innovation relates to digital versatile discs and in particular a holographic switch that acts as analogue signal within the digital content. My innovation is the creation of an analogue hologram on the surface of a compact disc. The hologram provides information that will be unique to the disc in question and to its originator, thus providing a security switch to identify the disc as a genuine product. The major benefits of this revolutionary digital disc protection process are essentially three-fold: • Illegal copies of CDs and DVDs can be spotted at a glance (literally), • The holographic-switch technology deployed in new players will prevent the disc from being copied OR can serve to limit the numbers of copies made from each original • The process is extremely cost-efficient as no additional manipulation to existing mass-stamping processes is required once the master disc has been created. The project was one of only 4 runners-up on EPSRC 2003/04 Research Council’s Business Plan Competition from an entry application of over 800, and was awarded £10,000 by Lord Sainsbury for its further development. http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/Content/Documents/BusinessPlanCompetition/THIS.htm See New Scientist http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18124373.400 issue 2437 March 2004