FORMAT AND METHOD FOR REPRESENTING A DYNAMIC DIGITAL IMAGE

• US 20130321435A1
• Filed: 05/30/2012
• Published: 12/05/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 05/30/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: NCR Voyix Corporation
• Original Assignee: Harden E. Stevens III
• Inventors: Stevens, Harden E. III
• Granted Patent: US 9,001,136 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 345/522
• 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: G06F 21/6209 to a single file or object, e.g. in a secure envelope, encrypted and accessed using a key, or with access control rules appended to the object itself
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2221/2135 Metering
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/00 Input arrangements for transferring data to be processed into a form capable of being handled by the computer; Output arrangements for transferring data from processing unit to output unit, e.g. interface arrangements
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/60 using transform coding

Abstract

An image format and method are presented for storing a digital image in the image format. The image format includes image data and executable computer instructions. Displaying a digital image stored in this image format requires executing the stored executable instructions which generate the image data for the associated digital image.

Claims

1. ) A digital image format for storing information and computer executable instructions that generate a digital image, the image format comprising:

a header information section including information about the format and the digital image;

an image data section including information related to the digital image;

an executable code section including computer executable instructions that when executed by a computer perform operations to generate viewable image data for the digital image; and

a program variables section including variables and static data defined and used by the computer executable instructions when executed by the computer.

2. ) The format of claim 1, where the information about the digital image included in the header information section includes a unique identifier associated with the digital image.

3. ) The format of claim 1, where the information in the image data section includes encrypted image data for the digital image and where the operations performed by the executable computer instructions include a decryption operation that decrypts the encrypted image data when certain conditions are met.

4. ) The format of claim 1, where the operations performed by the executable computer instructions include a generation operation that generates new image data.

5. ) The format of claim 2, where the operations performed by the executable computer instructions include an Internet communications operation that sends data to and then receives data from a remote computer over the Internet.

6. ) The format of claim 5, where the data sent to the remote computer includes the unique identifier for the digital image.

7. ) The format of claim 6, where the data sent to the remote computer further includes information that identifies the computer executing the computer instructions.

8. ) The format of claim 6, where the data received from the remote computer includes information required to render image data for the digital image.

9. ) The format of claim 8, where the information required to render the image data includes information required to decrypt the image data included in the image data section.

10. ) The format of claim 6, where the data received from the remote computer includes image data that is used to render the digital image.

11. ) The format of claim 1, where the computer instructions use and update the variables and data included in the program variable section and where the operations performed by the executable computer instructions include an update program variable section operation that caused the stored original program variable section in the format to be updated with any updated data when the computer executing the computer instructions has access to update the stored format.

12. ) The format of claim 11, where one of the variables included in the program variable section is the number of times the digital image has been rendered on different computers.

13. ) The format of claim 12, where the computer instructions will not render the digital image if the digital image has been rendered on different computers more that a predetermined maximum number of times.

14. ) A computer implemented image rendering method for rendering a digital image using computer data organized in an image format where the image format includes image data and computer executable instructions, the method comprising the steps of:

receiving the digital image organized in the image format wherein the digital image includes original image data and computer executable instructions;

establishing a virtual execution environment to execute the computer executable instructions wherein the virtual execution environment provides an application program interface used by the computer executable instructions to receive information and request services and wherein the virtual execution environment provides the computer executable instructions access to the image data;

executing the computer executable instructions within the virtual execution environment wherein the computer executable instructions, when executed, use the application program interface to receive information and request services from the virtual execution environment and wherein the computer executable instructions use the received information to generate new image data; and

receiving the new image data as output from the computer executable instructions.

15. ) The method of claim 14, wherein the computer executable instructions are generated by a compiler program from instructions written in a computer programming language.

16. ) The method of claim 14, wherein the computer executable instructions are written in an interpreted computer programming language.

17. ) The method of claim 14, wherein the image format further includes program variable data that is accessed by the computer executable instructions during execution.

18. ) The method of claim 17, wherein establishing the virtual execution environment further includes providing the computer executable instructions access to the program variable data.

19. ) The method of claim 18, wherein the information received by the computer executable instructions using the application program interface includes local environment information including the source of the digital image and information that uniquely identifies the computer executing the method.

20. ) The method of claim 19, wherein the services provided by the application program interface includes a retrieve web data service that includes receiving a Uniform Resource Identifier (URL) from the computer executable instructions that identifies a web page on a remote computer, performing a page request on a network using the URL, receiving data in response to the page request and returning the data to the computer executable instructions.

21. ) The method of claim 20, wherein the computer executable instructions, when executing within the virtual execution environment, communicates with a remote computer wherein the communications include sending information to the remote computer by encoding the information in the page request used by the retrieve web page service to request the web page and receiving information from the remote computer by receiving the response data from the page request.

22. ) The method of claim 21, wherein the information retrieved from the remote computer includes information used by the computer executable instructions to decode the image data stored in the digital image.

23. ) The method of claim 21, wherein the information retrieved from the remote computer includes supplemental image data used by the computer executable instructions to modify the image data stored in the digital image to generate the new image data.

24. ) The method of claim 21, wherein the information retrieved from the remote computer includes second image data and the computer executable instructions use the second image data instead of the image data stored in the digital image to generate the new image data.

25. ) The method of claim 21, wherein the information retrieved from the remote computer includes information used by the computer executable instructions to generate the new image data.

26. ) The method of claim 21, wherein the information sent to the remote computer includes the information that uniquely identifies the computer executing the method.

27. ) A computer implemented method for displaying a digital image on a display device, the method comprising:

receiving first data representing the digital image where the first data is organized in an image format that includes computer executable instructions and image data;

executing the computer executable instructions included in the received first data;

receiving second data from a remote computer as a result of executing the computer executable instructions;

producing, by executing the computer executable instructions, third data using the received second data; and

displaying the third data on the display device.

28. ) The method of claim 27, further including the step of:

sending, by executing the computer executable instructions, a data request to a remote computer where the data request includes information about a computer executing the computer executable instructions; and

wherein the step of receiving second data further includes wherein the second data is received in response to sending the data request.

29. ) The method of claim 27, wherein the second data includes indicia authorizing the displaying of the digital image and where the producing step further includes wherein the third data only includes image data for the digital image if the indicia indicates an authorization to display the digital image or the third data includes image data for a message if the indicia indicates the digital image is not authorized for display.

30. ) A computer implemented method for displaying a digital image on a display device, the method comprising:

reading first data representing the digital image from a file where the first data is organized in an image format that includes computer executable instructions, program variables and image data;

executing the computer executable instructions included in the received first data;

generating, by executing the computer executable instructions, second image data using the image data included in the first data and a first variable of the program variables included in the first data;

modifying, by executing the computer executable instructions, the first variable to indicate generating the second image data;

modifying the file by replacing the original data for the first variable with the data for the modified first variable; and

displaying the second image data on the display device.