MolMark: Safeguarding Molecular Structures through Learnable Atom-Level Watermarking

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Hu, Runwen, Chen, Peilin, Ding, Keyan, Wang, Shiqi
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Hu, Runwen
Chen, Peilin
Ding, Keyan
Wang, Shiqi
author_facet Hu, Runwen
Chen, Peilin
Ding, Keyan
Wang, Shiqi
contents AI-driven molecular generation is reshaping drug discovery and materials design, yet the lack of protection mechanisms leaves AI-generated molecules vulnerable to unauthorized reuse and provenance ambiguity. Such limitation undermines both scientific reproducibility and intellectual property security. To address this challenge, we propose the first deep learning based watermarking framework for molecules (MolMark), which is exquisitely designed to embed high-fidelity digital signatures into molecules without compromising molecular functionalities. MolMark learns to modulate the chemically meaningful atom-level representations and enforce geometric robustness through SE(3)-invariant features, maintaining robustness under rotation, translation, and reflection. Additionally, MolMark integrates seamlessly with AI-based molecular generative models, enabling watermarking to be treated as a learned transformation with minimal interference to molecular structures. Experiments on benchmark datasets (QM9, GEOM-DRUG) and state-of-the-art molecular generative models (GeoBFN, GeoLDM) demonstrate that MolMark can embed 16-bit watermarks while retaining more than 90% of essential molecular properties, preserving downstream performance, and enabling >95% extraction accuracy under SE(3) transformations. MolMark establishes a principled pathway for unifying molecular generation with verifiable authorship, supporting trustworthy and accountable AI-driven molecular discovery.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_17702
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle MolMark: Safeguarding Molecular Structures through Learnable Atom-Level Watermarking
Hu, Runwen
Chen, Peilin
Ding, Keyan
Wang, Shiqi
Machine Learning
AI-driven molecular generation is reshaping drug discovery and materials design, yet the lack of protection mechanisms leaves AI-generated molecules vulnerable to unauthorized reuse and provenance ambiguity. Such limitation undermines both scientific reproducibility and intellectual property security. To address this challenge, we propose the first deep learning based watermarking framework for molecules (MolMark), which is exquisitely designed to embed high-fidelity digital signatures into molecules without compromising molecular functionalities. MolMark learns to modulate the chemically meaningful atom-level representations and enforce geometric robustness through SE(3)-invariant features, maintaining robustness under rotation, translation, and reflection. Additionally, MolMark integrates seamlessly with AI-based molecular generative models, enabling watermarking to be treated as a learned transformation with minimal interference to molecular structures. Experiments on benchmark datasets (QM9, GEOM-DRUG) and state-of-the-art molecular generative models (GeoBFN, GeoLDM) demonstrate that MolMark can embed 16-bit watermarks while retaining more than 90% of essential molecular properties, preserving downstream performance, and enabling >95% extraction accuracy under SE(3) transformations. MolMark establishes a principled pathway for unifying molecular generation with verifiable authorship, supporting trustworthy and accountable AI-driven molecular discovery.
title MolMark: Safeguarding Molecular Structures through Learnable Atom-Level Watermarking
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.17702