System for uniquely and persistently identifying, managing, and tracking digital objects

• US 6,135,646 A
• Filed: 02/28/1997
• Issued: 10/24/2000
• Est. Priority Date: 10/22/1993
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Corporation for National Research Initiatives
• Original Assignee: Corporation for National Research Initiatives
• Inventors: Kahn, Robert E., Ely, David K.
• Primary Examiner(s): Luu, Le Hien
• Application Number:
  US08/808,050
• Time in Patent Office: 1,334 Days
• Field of Search: 395/616, 395/421.1, 395/677, 395/610, 395/615, 395/187.01, 395/200.49, 395/200.47, 380/4, 707/104
• US Class Current: 709/217
• 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 2221/2101 Auditing as a secondary aspect
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99945 Object-oriented database structure processing
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99948 Application of database or data structure, e.g. distributed, multimedia, or image

Abstract

Methods of managing digital objects in a network are presented. Holders of rights in digital objects are enabled to control terns and conditions under which they are accessed by users in a network, or are granted to others.

Claims

1. A system for organizing digital information in a network that includes computational facilities comprising:

digital objects, each of the digital objects comprising one or more sequences of structured data or sets of such sequences, each of the sequences or sets of sequences incorporating a work or a portion of a work or other digital information in which a party has rights or interests, or in which there is value, each of the sequences or sets of sequences being structured in a way that is interpretable by one or more of the computational facilities in the network,

each of the digital objects including an identifier that uniquely identifies the digital object within the network and persists, with respect to the digital object, over a period of time that is at least as long as the existence of the digital object,

an administrative mechanism that (a) is distributed among the computational facilities, (b) assures the uniqueness and persistence of the identifiers over a time period that is at least as long as the existence of the digital objects, and (c) distributes state information that includes the identifiers among computational facilities by an algorithmic process for managing the uniqueness and persistence of the identifiers, at least some of the digital objects including other structured data which is useful in processing the digital objects, including managing access to them, and

a resolution mechanism that accepts unique identifiers as input and resolves each of the identifiers to state information that denotes a computational facility or other digital object that contains the digital object associated with the unique identifier.

2. The system of claim 1 further comprising

repositories on the network in which digital objects are stored and from which they can be accessed.

3. The system of claim 1 further comprising

validation information for at least some of the digital objects, the validation information being sufficient to permit a determination whether a purported instance of a digital object is identical to an original instance of the digital object.

4. The system of claim 3 which the validation information is stored separately from the corresponding digital object.

5. The system of claim 1 wherein the other structured data includes information about at least one of the following:

registration of rights in the digital objects;

accesses to and uses of digital objects;

the terms and conditions for access and use of digital objects;

the ownership and licensing of rights to digital objects;

links between different digital objects.

6. The system of claim 5 in which the other structured data is stored separately from the corresponding digital object.

7. The system of claim 1 in which

the resolution mechanism is scalable without requiring full replication of the state information and includes servers on the network, each of the servers storing information about states of the digital object including information that associates the identifiers with the locations of corresponding digital object in the network.

8. The system of claim 1 in which the administrative mechanism distributes the state information relatively evenly among all or a subset of the computational facilities.

9. The system of claim 1 further comprising a registering authority that processes applications for registration of rights or interests associated with digital information structured as digital objects, based on the digital objects, their identifiers, and validation information for each of the digital objects sufficient to determine whether a purported instance of a digital object is identical to an original instance.

10. The system of claim 1 further comprising

an access mechanism for applying terms and conditions for access to each of the digital objects,

the mechanism including information about the terms and conditions, and

the mechanism being arranged to make the information about terms and conditions available to a user in connection with a request for access to one of the digital objects, to enable the user to indicate assent to the terms and conditions, and to permit access to the user only upon the user indicating assent to the terms and conditions.

11. The system of claim 1 further comprising

a recordation server on the network, the recordation server storing information on rights or interests or value pertaining to the digital objects on the network.

12. The system of claim 1 further comprising

a reference service on the network, separate from the digital objects, for recording information about accesses to and transactions associated with the digital objects, the information in the reference service being accessible to authorized users.

13. The system of claim 1 further comprising an identifier service, accessible on the network, for generating the unique identifiers, the service including servers each serving a portion of an identifier space.

14. The system of claim 1 further comprising

an authorization server which provides information about terms and conditions for access to a digital object and authorizations for use of the digital object.