7201733D content searching and policingClosedGRD Development of PrototypeInnovate UKSearching for information on the web is one of the primary on-line activities undertaken by individuals and businesses alike. To date almost all searches use “keywords” to access the content either directly in the case of documents or as “tags” associated with images and photos. But what if you don’t know the keyword or you are looking for particular aspects of 3D content? With the growing advert of 3D displays there is a compelling case for more and more 3D content to be created, stored and sold. 3D repositories are emerging – but content in these libraries is presently accessed using keyword searching inherited from text and image search engines which can be very limiting. Our recently successfully completed TSB Metadata project - Increasing the value of digital content - New Business Models for 3D content - the role of metadata (TSB Ref: 130432) allowed us to develop in partnership with the V&A Museum novel prototype search tools and a 3D content policing prototypes which we wish to further extend and refine under this project. Two new search tools for accessing 3D content have been developed and tested; Search-by- Sketch and Search-by-Image. These novel search approaches compliment the present searchby- text by providing the user with a much richer expressive means of finding the resource they require. Imagine trying to search of a particular type of tea pot – how would you express the desire to search for a tea pot with a certain type of spout using traditional techniques? With our search systems users can roughly sketch the features of the object they require, or select an image of the object (or a closely related one) and the system will return a rank ordered list of matching 3D objects in the library. We have also built and demonstrated a prototype 3D content digital rights policing system which crawls the web for images and 3D files and harvests these to match against the 3D repository, and highlights potential unlicensed use and infringements