I. Introduction
The term ‘heritage’ in its intangible aspect, means the representations, skills, practices, knowledge, expressions, instruments, cultural spaces, and artifacts associated therewith that groups, communities, and in some cases individuals recognize as part of their culture [1]. CH is an important resource of the economy and thus it should be wholly utilized by cultural industries under the protection of Intellectual Property [2]. The IPRs (Intellectual Property rights) are legal protections that grant an exclusive right for a certain period to the creator over her/his discovery or creation [3]. A sustainable means of the preservation of heritage is digitization. Besides ensuring its safety for future generations, digitization provides worldwide access to the different cultures of the world’s heritage and protects its precious resources from deterioration. Digitizing CH elements enable to create a repository of historical and cultural tangible heritage, and thus ensures its immediate preservation for coming generations. However, digital technologies could inversely affect the environment of information by allowing the inauthentic data processing by which original copies can be altered, transformed or multifaceted alterations of the heritage data can be done. If no proper legal boundaries are fixed, this could deceive the public about the heritage data authenticity. Thus, heritage digitization poses critical concerns relating to the authenticity of the data. In such cases, the use of copyright strategies in the field of CH and the modern world would be of critical importance. Among so my techniques adopted to secure data, digital watermarking is gaining more attention because of its ability to authenticate the data content and guarantee its ownership rights [13], [14]. In this method, a hidden message (known as a watermark) is embedded within digital information without jeopardizing the data integrity [15], [16]. The digital watermarking algorithms are generally classified into two groups: Fragile, and Robust watermarking. The fragile watermarking system is usually useful for content authentication and tamper detection applications as this type of watermarking system is not able to withstand various types of signal processing attacks. The watermark vanishes from the original host media when the host is subjected to any type of attack [17]. The robust watermark can withstand various signal processing attacks. In this type of watermarking system, despite various signal processing attacks, we are still able to extract the embedded watermarks. The robust watermarking system is appropriate for ownership verification and copyright protection. So, to protect CH media from unauthorized access, we need to design a robust watermarking system. In this paper, a robust blind watermarking technique for colored CH images has been presented.