Digital watermarking technology is developed from information hiding technology, and it is an interdisciplinary field such as digital signal processing, image processing, cryptography application and algorithm design. Digital watermarking was first proposed by Tirkel et al. in 1993. The first article on watermarking was published in an international academic conference, which proposed the concept and possible application of digital watermarking, and proposed two algorithms for embedding watermarking into image least significant bit. 1996 the first international symposium on information hiding was held in Newton college, Cambridge, England, which marked the birth of information hiding.

In China, Li Bingfa, a professor at the School of Computer Science of Sichuan University, director of the Professor Committee of the School of Software of Sichuan University and chief expert of Chengdu Yufei Information Engineering Co., Ltd., has also started digital watermarking teaching and research and development for more than 20 years from 1993. He also published 100 academic papers on digital watermarking in famous magazines at home and abroad such as IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence and IEEE Transactions on Circuits and System, and published them in International Journal of Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence and major international academic conferences, and presided over the development of the world's first printed digital watermarking software. He is the pioneer and founder of the commercial application of digital watermarking technology in China.