Method and apparatus for managing digital content usage rights

• US 20020109707A1
• Filed: 01/17/2002
• Published: 08/15/2002
• Est. Priority Date: 01/17/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: ContentGuard Holdings, Inc. (Pendrell Corporation)
• Original Assignee: ContentGuard Holdings, Inc. (Pendrell Corporation)
• Inventors: Nguyen, Mai, Lao, Guillermo, Ham, Manuel, Tieu, Vincent, Jacobs, Rory
• Granted Patent: US 7,085,741 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 345/700
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/10 Protecting distributed programs or content, e.g. vending or licensing of copyrighted material protection in video systems or pay television H04N7/16 ; Digital rights management [DRM]
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99939 Privileged access
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99945 Object-oriented database structure processing

Abstract

A method and an apparatus for specifying and editing rights associated with a content includes a general model that comprehends rights specification at different levels of the content life cycle. The rights specification includes content association, and the protection of the content is a byproduct of the content and rights association. The general model includes a rights component, a conditions component, a rights offer component, and a rights label component. The rights offers specify the relationship between rights and conditions. The rights labels are collections of the offers.

Claims

1. A system for manipulating and managing usage rights adapted to be associated with digital content, said system comprising:

a rights module operative to specify a manner of use;

a conditions module operative to specify one or more conditions necessary for exercising a manner of use; and

an offers module operative to combine one or more rights specified by said rights module and one or more conditions specified by said conditions module to create a rights offer object of usage rights and associated conditions necessary for exercising a manner of use indicated by the usage rights.

2. A system as recited in claim 1, further comprising a label component for one or more rights offers into a label object adapted to be associated with specified content, whereby a user can select one or more of the rights offers in the label to exercise a manner of use with respect to the content.

3. A system as recited in claim 2, wherein the offer object and the label object are graphical objects.

4. A system as recited in claim 3, further comprising a batch support module operative to apply operations to plural selected objects in a collective manner.

5. A system as recited in claim 4, wherein said batch support module includes a drag and drop interface.

6. A system as recited in claim 2, wherein said label object represents a file of computer code.

7. A system as recited in claim 6, wherein the code is in XrML format.

8. A system as recited in claim 2, wherein said label specifies the content and metadata associated with the content.

9. A system as recited in claim 2, wherein said label is not associated with specific content to serve as a label template.

10. A system as recited in claim 2, wherein said labels specifies parts of the content and the metadata associated with the parts of the content.

11. A system as recited in claim 9, wherein said label includes precedence rules.

12. A system as recited in claim 2, further comprising means as editing module operative to view and edit said label.

13. A system as recited in claim 9, wherein said label template contains plural offers.

14. A system as recited in claim 9, wherein said label template includes generic metadata.

15. A system as recited in claim 14, wherein said generic metadata includes the name of the content.

17. A label as recited in claim 16, wherein said label further comprises a file of computer code expressing said usage rights and said conditions.

18. A label as recited in claim 16, further comprising an association to content.

19. A label as recited in claim 17, wherein the code is in XrML format.

20. A label as recited in claim 18, further comprising metadata associated with the content.

21. A label as recited in claim 16, further comprising precedence rules.

16. A label for expressing usage rights adapted to be associated with digital content, said label comprising:

usage rights specifying a manner of use;

conditions specifying one or more conditions necessary for exercising a manner of use, wherein one or more of said usage rights and one or more of said conditions are combined to create a rights offer object; and

a label container including at least one rights offer object.