ELECTRONIC BOOK RENTALS

• US 20120173353A1
• Filed: 12/29/2010
• Published: 07/05/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 12/29/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Inventors: Rausch, Daniel B., Fardeen, Mohamed Aakhil, Limp, David A.
• Granted Patent: US 9,129,322 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/26.1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/105 Arrangements for software license management or administration, e.g. for managing licenses at corporate level
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/1235 with control of digital rights management [DRM]
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/00 Commerce
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0601 Electronic shopping [e-shopping]
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0645 Rental transactions; Leasing transactions

Abstract

Architectures and techniques are described to rent electronic books. In particular, a content provider can rent electronic books to individuals for a specified rental term. The individuals may have the option to modify the rental term for an electronic book. The rental term for a particular electronic book may be modified by extending the rental term of the particular electronic book or decreasing the rental term of the particular electronic book. Individuals may also convert the rental of an electronic book to a purchase and a purchase of an electronic book to a rental. In order to rent the electronic books to individuals, the content provider may acquire permission from the publishers of the electronic books. In some cases, the content provider may acquire a pool of time-bound rentable licenses from the publishers to allocate to individuals renting electronic books from the content provider.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method, comprising:

under control of one or more computing systems of a content provider, the one or more computing systems configured with specific executable instructions,

receiving a rental request from a client device of an individual to rent an electronic book, the rental request specifying a period of time for the individual to rent the electronic book;

providing permission to the client device for the individual to access the electronic book for the period of time specified by the rental request;

receiving a rental term modification request from the client device to change the period of time for the individual to rent the electronic book;

providing permission to the client device for the individual to access the electronic book for an additional period of time based, at least partly, on the rental term modification request; and

providing an indication to the client device that the additional period of time for the individual to access the electronic book has expired.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, acquiring permission to rent the electronic book from a publisher of the electronic book.

3. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein acquiring permission to rent the electronic book from the publisher of the electronic book comprises agreeing to provide payment to the publisher in accordance with a transaction formula in order to rent the electronic book to the individual.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein acquiring permission to rent the electronic book from the publisher of the electronic book comprises acquiring one or more licenses to access content of the electronic book.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising sending a notification to the client device that the period of time specified in the rental request will expire within a particular period of time, the notification including at least one option selectable to modify the period of time for the individual to rent the electronic book.

6. The computer-implemented method of claim 5, wherein the rental term modification request is received, at least partly, in response to selection of the at least one option.

7. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the rental term modification request indicates a request to extend the period of time for the individual to rent the electronic book.

8. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the rental term modification request indicates a request to purchase the electronic book.

9. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising causing at least a portion of the electronic book to be removed from memory of the client device after the additional period of time for the individual to access the electronic book has expired.

10. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving a content access request from the client device to access content of the electronic book after expiration of the additional period of time; and

denying the client device access to the electronic book at least in partly in response to receiving the content access request.

11. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving a request from the client device to purchase an additional electronic book; and

receiving a request from the client device to convert the purchase of the additional electronic book to a rental of the additional electronic book for a certain period of time.

12. A system comprising:

a processor; and

memory accessible to the processor, the memory storing;

an electronic book publisher module executable by the processor to acquire a plurality of licenses associated with an electronic book, wherein each of the plurality of licenses provides access to the electronic book for a respective variable period of time;

an electronic book rental module executable by the processor to;

receive a request from a client device to rent the electronic book for a period of time;

allocate a particular license of the plurality of licenses to the client device, at least partly in response to the request, for the period of time specified in the request;

decrease a number of the plurality of licenses that are available to allocate to rent the electronic book, at least partly in response to allocating the particular license to the client device; and

increase the number of the plurality of licenses that are available to allocate to rent the electronic book when the period of time to rent the electronic book expires.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein one or more of the plurality of licenses may be allocated to rent the electronic book for a respective period of time that is different from the period of time specified by the request received from the client device.

14. The system of claim 12, wherein the electronic book publisher module is executable by the processor to cause an initial rental payment to be provided to the publisher at least partly in response to allocating the particular license to the client device.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the memory further stores a publisher payment module executable by the processor to cause a royalty payment to be provided to the publisher at least partly in response to allocating the particular license to an additional client device.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein a value of the initial rental payment is greater than a value of the royalty payment.

17. The system of claim 12, wherein the memory further stores a rental term modification module that is executable by the processor to:

receive a request from the client device to extend the particular period of time to rent the electronic book by an additional period of time; and

provide metadata of the electronic book to the client device, the metadata indicating permission for the client device to access content of the electronic book for the additional period of time.

18. The system of claim 12, wherein the memory further stores a digital rights management module executable by the processor to determine whether the period of time for the client device to rent the electronic book has expired.

19. An electronic reader device comprising:

a processor; and

memory accessible by the processor, the memory storing;

an electronic book rental module that is executable by the processor to;

send a request to a content provider to rent an electronic book for a period of time;

receive metadata to access the electronic book for the period of time;

send a request to the content provider to modify the period of time to access the electronic book; and

modify the metadata of the electronic book when the period of time to access the electronic book is modified; and

an electronic book rendering module executable by the processor to render at least a portion of the electronic book after receiving the metadata to access the electronic book.

20. The computing system of claim 19, wherein the electronic book rendering module is executable by the processor to retrieve the at least a portion of the electronic book from a local memory storage device of the electronic reader device.

21. The computing system of claim 19, wherein the electronic book rendering module is executable by the processor to retrieve the at least a portion of the electronic book by sending a request to the content provider for the at least a portion of the electronic book.

22. The computing system of claim 19, wherein the memory further stores a digital rights management module executable by the processor to compare an indicator of time stored by a local memory storage device of the electronic reader device with particular metadata of the electronic book indicating when the period of time to rent the electronic book expires.

23. The computing system of claim 19, wherein the metadata of the electronic book includes one or more vouchers, one or more keys, one or more certificates, one or more tokens, or combinations thereof.

24. The computing system of claim 19, wherein the memory further stores a search module executable by the processor to search at least a portion of the content of the electronic book after the period of time to rent the electronic book expires.

25. A computer-implemented method comprising:

under control of one or more computing systems of a content provider, the one or more computing systems configured with specific executable instructions,

receiving a request from a client device of an individual to rent an electronic book for a particular rental term;

providing permission to the client device for the individual to access the electronic book for the particular rental term;

receiving one or more annotations of the electronic book from the client device during the particular rental term; and

providing access to the one or more annotations after the particular rental term expires.

26. The computer-implemented method of claim 25, further comprising providing metadata of the electronic book to the client device after the particular rental term expires, the metadata indicating that the one or more annotations are accessible by the client device after the rental term expires.

27. The computer-implemented method of claim 26, wherein the metadata indicates that the one or more annotations are accessible by the client device for a limited period of time after the rental term expires.

28. The computer-implemented method of claim 25, wherein the one or more annotations include notes, links, highlighted portions of the electronic book, other content related to the electronic book that the individual has associated with the electronic book, or combinations thereof.

29. The computer-implemented method of claim 25, wherein the content provider provides access to the one or more annotations after the rental term expires via a site of the content provider.