Information providing system and identification information adding device

• US 7,099,490 B1
• Filed: 10/20/2000
• Issued: 08/29/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 10/21/1999
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Sony Corporation (Sony Group Corp.)
• Original Assignee: Sony Corporation (Sony Group Corp.), Visionarts, Inc. (Sony Group Corp.)
• Inventors: Fujita, Takeshi, Hatta, Nariaki, Fujikawa, Yasufumi, Endoh, Hitoshi
• Primary Examiner(s): Mehta, Bhavesh M.
• Assistant Examiner(s): MACKOWEY, ANTHONY M
• Application Number:
  US10/110,819
• Time in Patent Office: 2,139 Days
• Field of Search: 382/100, 382/305, 707/104.1
• US Class Current: 382/100
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/40 of multimedia data, e.g. slideshows comprising image and additional audio data retrieval of still image data G06F16/50; retrieval of audio data G06F16/60; retrieval of video data G06F16/70
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• 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

The present invention has an object to facilitate investigation of access status in internet.

To achieve this object, when the HTTP server (203) transmits prescribed image data, identity information meeting the access from the terminal unit (30) is generated in the identity information adding process (205), and added to prescribed image data. The corresponding relationship between the identity information and the image data containing the added identity information is recorded in the database (206).

Claims

1. An information use terminal comprising:

image data acquiring means which acquires image data containing added intrinsic identity information from an informant server providing at least image data;

identity information extracting means which extracts said identity information from the image data acquired by said image data acquiring means;

means for requesting updating of the image data by notifying said informant server of said extracted identity information; and

image data updating means which provides image data having added new identity information in response to the request for updating from said informant server to update the image data,

wherein said identity information is embedded in the image data.

2. An information use terminal according to claim 1, comprising:

a managing means which manages said acquired image data in response to the identity information extracted by said extracting means.

3. An information use terminal according to claim 1, wherein said image data are publicity image data.

4. A machine-readable medium in which an information use program is recorded for:

acquiring image data having added intrinsic identity information from the informant server which provides at least image data;

extracting said identity information from said acquired image data;

requesting updating of the image data by notifying said informant server of said extracted identity information; and

providing the image data having added new identity information in response to this request for updating, thereby updating the image data,

wherein said identity information is embedded in the image data.

5. A machine-readable recording medium according to claim 4, wherein said image data are publicity image data.

6. An accounting unit comprising:

receiving means which, in the presence of image data containing added identity information meeting an access from an information use terminal, receives said image identity information extracted by said information use terminal from the image data from said information use terminal, and receives terminal identity information of said information use terminal;

storage means which correlates and stores said image identity information and said terminal identity information received by the receiving means; and

information processing means which determines whether or not the same combination of image identity information and terminal identity information has already been stored in the storage means, so that accounting is not made when said combination is stored, and accounting is made when said combination is not stored,

wherein said identity information is embedded in the image data.

7. An accounting unit comprising:

receiving means which, in the presence of image data containing added identity information meeting an access from an information use terminal, receives said image identity information extracted by said information use terminal from the image data from said information use terminal, and receives terminal identity information of said information use terminal;

storage means which correlates and stores a date on which the receiving means received said image identity information and terminal identity information, with said image identity information and terminal identity information; and

information processing means which determines whether or not the same combination of image identity information, terminal identity information and the receiving date has already been stored in the storage means, so that accounting is not made when said combination is stored, and accounting is made when said combination is not stored,

wherein said identity information is embedded in the image data.

8. An accounting unit comprising:

receiving means which, in the presence of image data containing added identity information meeting an access from an information use terminal, receives said image identity information extracted by said information use terminal from the image data from said information use terminal, and receives user identity information of the user using said information use terminal from said information use terminal;

storage means which correlates and stores said image identity information and said user identity information received by the receiving means; and

information processing means which determines whether or not the same combination of image identity information and user identity information has already been stored in the storage means, so that accounting is not made when said combination is stored, and accounting is made when said combination is not stored,

wherein said identity information is embedded in the image data.