LICENSING MEDIA CONSUMPTION USING DIGITAL CURRENCY

• US 20100010915A1
• Filed: 09/15/2009
• Published: 01/14/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 03/17/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Gamigo Inc.
• Original Assignee: WildTangent Incorporated (Samarion SE)
• Inventors: Shea, Matthew T., Vanderdasson, Sean W.
• Granted Patent: US 9,082,113 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/26
• 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: G06Q 20/06 Private payment circuits, e.g. involving electronic currency used among participants of a common payment scheme
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/123 Shopping for digital content
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/1235 with control of digital rights management [DRM]
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 2220/10 Usage protection of distributed data files
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 2220/18 Licensing
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/00 Commerce
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0207 Discounts or incentives, e.g. coupons or rebates
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0222 During e-commerce, i.e. online transactions
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/06 Buying, selling or leasing transactions
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0601 Electronic shopping [e-shopping]
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0621 Item configuration or customization
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/00 Information and communication technology [ICT] specially adapted for implementation of business processes of specific business sectors, e.g. utilities or tourism healthcare informatics G16H

Abstract

Methods and apparatus for issuing licenses to allow end users to consume digital media content on a user device by responding to licensing requests by determining the number of digital currency tokens required to license the requested consumption and then issuing the license if the end user'"'"'s account has a sufficient number of digital currency tokens. The end user may further use the digital currency tokens to purchase new features, which are internal and/or external to the digital media content. Other embodiments may be disclosed or claimed.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

receiving, by a licensing agent, an additional feature license request from a user to acquire update a license to include an additional feature associated with a licensed digital media content on a user device, wherein the digital media content was previously licensed, wherein the licensing of the digital media content was facilitated by the licensing agent, using digital currency tokens;

determining, by the licensing agent, a number of digital currency tokens required to license the additional feature; and

facilitating an exchange, by the licensing agent, of an additional feature license update to the prior license, to be issued to the user device in exchange for the determined number of digital currency tokens if sufficient digital currency tokens are present in a user account associated with the user, wherein the digital currency tokens include digital currency tokens the user paid for or digital currency tokens the user otherwise earned.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the facilitating the exchange further comprises verifying that the user account has at least the determined number of digital currency tokens;

and

the method further comprises debiting the user account by the determined number of digital currency tokens.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the debiting of digital currency tokens comprises not debiting digital currency tokens that the user paid for until all digital currency tokens that the user did not pay for are exhausted.

4. The method of claim 3 further comprising reporting the debiting of digital currency tokens the user did not pay for and those the user did pay for.

5. The method of claim 2, wherein the debiting of digital currency tokens comprises not debiting digital currency tokens that the user paid for until all digital currency tokens that the user obtained through an accrual program are exhausted, and not debiting said accrual digital currency tokens until all digital currency tokens obtained from a third party, other than through an accrual program, are exhausted.

6. The method of claim 5 further comprising reporting the number of digital currency tokens debited that the user paid for, the number that the user obtained through an accrual program, and the number that the user obtained from a third party, as applicable.

7. The method of claim 2 wherein the debiting is accomplished by a digital currency server and the verifying is accomplished by sending a request to the digital currency server.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the verifying comprises the licensing agent sending a request to a digital currency server to determine if sufficient digital currency tokens are in the user account.

9. The method of claim 1 further comprising the user device granting, to the user, access to the additional feature upon verification of the issued license, said license being valid for a period of time selected from:

an indefinite period of time, a definite period of time, a period of time that the user device remains active.

10. The method of claim 9 wherein the updated license is invalidated upon the user terminating the consumption of the digital media content.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the licensing agent is comprised of a client-side portion residing on the client device and a server-side portion residing on a separate server, the client device and separate server adapted to be communicatively coupled via a wired and/or wireless network, the client-side portion enabled to cache a quantity of digital currency tokens to enable the receiving, verifying, and issuing to be performed without communicating with the server-side portion of the licensing agent.

12. The method of claim 11 further comprising requesting, by the client-side portion of the licensing agent, additional digital currency tokens upon determining that the client-side cache has fallen beneath a pre-determined number of digital currency tokens and the client device is currently communicatively coupled to the server-side portion of the licensing agent.

13. The method of claim 12 further comprising tracking and reporting, by the client-side portion of the licensing agent, the licensing activities of the client-side portion of the licensing agent.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein the digital media content is a selected one of:

computer game content, interactive media content, video content, audio content, graphical content, and textual content.

15. The method of claim 1, wherein the additional feature comprises at least one of a functionality feature, a vanity feature, an enhanced content feature, and an enhanced digital media content management environment.

16. A media licensing server comprising:

a processor; and

a mass storage device including a plurality of programming instructions designed to implement a licensing module adapted to operate the processor to;

receive a request from a user to acquire an update to a license to include an additional feature associated with a licensed digital media content on a user device;

determine a number of digital currency tokens required to license the additional feature;

verify that a user account associated with the user has a sufficient number of digital currency tokens to redeem the license; and

issue a digital license to the user device for the additional feature in exchange for the number of digital currency tokens if the digital currency tokens are present in the user account, wherein the digital currency tokens include digital currency tokens the user paid for or digital currency tokens the user otherwise earned.

17. The media licensing server of claim 16, wherein the licensing module is further adapted to operate the processor to send a request to a digital currency server to determine if the user account has a sufficient number of digital currency tokens.

18. The media licensing server of claim 16, wherein the additional feature comprises at least one of a content-based feature and an environment-based feature.

19. The media licensing server of claim 18, wherein the content-based feature comprises at least one of a functionality feature, a vanity feature, and an enhanced content feature.

20. The media licensing server of claim 18, wherein the environment-based feature comprises at least an enhanced digital media content management environment.

21. A client device comprising:

a processor; and

a mass storage device including a plurality of programming instructions adapted to implement a client-side digital media licensing module to operate the processor to;

receive a user request to update a digital media license to further acquire an additional feature associated with a licensed digital media content;

determine a number of digital currency tokens required to obtain the license; and

debit the number of digital currency tokens required to license the requested media from a local cache of digital currency tokens.

22. The client device of claim 21, wherein the client-side portion of the digital media licensing module is further adapted to operate the processor to:

request, via a wireless and/or wired network, from a server-side digital media licensing module, authorization to cache a certain number of digital currency tokens on the client device; and

receive, in response, authorization from the server-side digital media licensing module to cache the requested number of digital currency tokens.

23. The client device of claim 21, wherein the client-side digital media licensing module is further adapted determine whether a current quantity of cached digital currency tokens is smaller than a pre-determined number and to request the authorization to cache the certain number of digital currency tokens if the determined current quantity of cached digital currency tokens is smaller than the predetermined number.