Extended Data Collection For Multi-Merchant Purchasing Environment For Downloadable Products

• US 20070022017A1
• Filed: 06/23/2006
• Published: 01/25/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 01/24/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Nolan, Sean, Bhambri, Vikram, Biyani, Raj, Hempey, Matthew, Warren, Susan
• Granted Patent: US 8,099,365 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/26
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0601 Electronic shopping [e-shopping]
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0617 Representative agent
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0623 Item investigation
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0641 Shopping interfaces

Abstract

A multi-merchant purchasing system is configured to identify downloadable products selected by a user for purchase. The identified downloadable products are offered by multiple merchants. The multi-merchant purchasing system enables the user to purchase all of the downloadable products in a single transaction. Specifically, the multi-merchant purchasing system determines payment information associated with the user and, with minimum user-interaction, sends the payment information to applications associated with the merchants for processing. The multi-merchant purchasing system may also be configured to receive purchase information from the merchant applications and maintains the purchase information for the user in a locker. The multi-merchant purchasing system may further be configured to automatically download and install the purchased product onto the user'"'"'s computing device through a software assistant. To ensure privacy and security, the multi-merchant purchasing system may include a credit card quarantine module to secure credit card data by encoding and multiple levels of encryptions. The multi-merchant purchasing system may be further configured to accept a request to collect extended user data related to the user on behalf of merchants and return the collected extended user data to the merchants.

Claims

1. ) One or more device-readable media having device-executable instructions for performing steps comprising:

identifying a user associated with a commerce application;

determining downloadable products purchased by the user through the commerce application, the purchased product being purchased from multiple merchants;

retrieving purchasing information associated with the purchased products, the purchasing information including data associated with licenses associated with the purchased products;

collecting extended user data associated with the user on behalf of the merchant;

providing the extended user data to the merchant; and

providing the purchasing information to a client application associated with the user.

2. ) The one or more device-readable media as recited in claim 1, further comprising:

receiving a request from the client application to perform an operation related to at least one of the purchased products;

determining if the requested operation is authorized by a license associated with the at least one purchased product; and

if the requested operation is authorized, performing the operation.

3. ) The one or more device-readable media as recited in claim 2, wherein the requested operation includes at least one of repeated downloading of the purchased product, downloading the purchased product onto multiple computing devices, or upgrading the license associated with the purchased product.

4. ) The one or more device-readable media as recited in claim 2, further comprising updating the purchasing information to include the performed operation.

5. ) The one or more device-readable media as recited in claim 2, further comprising providing information about the performed operation to the merchant associated with the purchased product corresponding to the operation.

6. ) The one or more device-readable media as recited in claim 1, further comprising:

determining configuration information of purchased products corresponding to a computing device associated with the user; and

providing instructions to the client application to automatically image the computing device based, at least in part, on the configuration information.

7. ) The one or more device-readable media as recited in claim 1, further comprising authenticating the user before providing the purchasing information to the client application.

8. ) The one or more device-readable media as recited in claim 1, wherein the extended user data is formatted as extensible markup language (XML) data.

9. ) The one or more device-readable media as recited in claim 1, wherein the extended user data is reduced to a smallest set of extended user data before being provided to the merchant.

10. ) One or more device-readable media having a data structure comprising:

a first data field including a name identifier, the name identifier including a name identifying extended data to be collected as part of purchasing information for downloadable products purchased by a user;

a second data field indexed to the first data field including a label identifier, the label identifier including a portion of text to be displayed to the user using a user interface;

a third data field indexed to the first data field including a canonical name identifier, the canonical identifier including a standard name to identify the extended data regardless of the name identifier; and

a fourth data field indexed to the first data field including a default value, the default value to be displayed to the user using the user interface.

11. ) The one or more device-readable media as recited in claim 10, further comprising a Boolean required field indexed to the first data field, the Boolean required field indicating the required status of the extended data.

12. ) A system for managing purchased digital content comprising:

a data store including purchasing information associated with users that purchased downloadable products through the system, the purchasing information including license information associated with downloadable products purchased by each users, the purchased products being purchased from multiple merchants;

an extended data collection module, the extended data collection module configured to receive a request from the merchants to collect extended data from the users, the extended data collection module further configured to send the collected extended data to the merchants; and

a locker module configured to providing the purchasing information in the data store to the users, the locker module further configured to receive requests for performing operations related to a downloadable product from a client application associated with at least one of the users and to perform the operations based, at least in part, on the purchasing information associated the at least one user.

13. ) The system as recited in claim 12, wherein the locker module is further configured to update the purchase information in the data store with data associated with the performed operation.

14. ) The system as recited in claim 13, further comprising merchant applications associated with the merchants, wherein the locker module is further configured to receive the purchase information from the merchant applications and to record the purchase information in the data store.

15. ) The system as recited in claim 14, wherein the locker module is further configured to send the data associated with the performed operation to the merchant application corresponding to the downloadable product that is related to the operation.

16. ) The system as recited in claim 12, further comprising an authentication module configured to provide authentication information to a user to the locker module, wherein the locker module is configured to identify the authentication information before performing the operation.

17. ) The system as recited in claim 12, wherein the extended data includes data to key a software license for the purchased products.

18. ) The system as recited in claim 12, wherein the extended data collection module uses a canonical name of the extended data to produce a smallest set of extended data.

19. ) The system as recited in claim 12, wherein at least a portion of the extended data is stored in the data store.

20. ) The system as recited in claim 12, wherein at least one of the locker module and client applications is configured as a web service.