System and method for publishing, distributing, and reading electronic interactive books

• US 7,631,013 B2
• Filed: 04/05/2006
• Issued: 12/08/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 04/06/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Arose Books Publishing, LLC
• Original Assignee: Sierra Interactive Systems, Inc.
• Inventors: Parsons, Katherine Mary, Parsons, Marcella Betz
• Primary Examiner(s): Wong; Don
• Assistant Examiner(s): DANG, THANH HA T
• Application Number:
  US11/278,798
• Publication Number:
  US 20060230340A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,343 Days
• Field of Search: 707/3, 707/10, 707/100, 707/103.Y, 707/104.1
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/258 Data format conversion from or to a database
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/93 Document management systems
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 5/06 with both visual and audible presentation of the material to be studied
• 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

A book or other digital content is represented as a set of objects in a relational database schema format called IBF (Interactive Book Format) and the controlling system software. This design provides for viewing books in a manner that coordinates additional information and provides interaction with the original book, while not disturbing the original publication and copyrighted material and even protecting that copyrighted material from piracy by supporting industry standard digital rights management security features. The inventive technique includes the use of conversion engines which will aid publishers in converting existing books into IBF format. The inventive technology further provides the ability to read any book in IBF format on a computer using refreshable Braille display, allowing the reader the advantage of reading all books in this format without having to purchase expensive, specially made Braille books.

Claims

1. A method for displaying electronic books on a device comprising random access memory, central processor unit, and system software, the method comprising:

representing a published electronic content in an interactive book format including interactive book format objects, the interactive book format objects including a book object, the book object including a copyright for the published electronic content;

wherein the published electronic content is retrieved using a software system for interpreting the interactive book format objects;

wherein the retrieved published electronic content is displayed to a reader on a display media, the display media utilizing pins to display the retrieved published electronic content in Braille;

wherein the copyright protects dimensions, cover, international standard book number or European article number or library of Congress number, formatting, specification, and content per page of the published electronic content, the copyright protecting the interactive book format objects;

wherein the published electronic content is protected by the copyright while being distributed either by collecting the interactive book format objects into a contiguous file or as one or more of the interactive book format objects sent across a network using a communication protocol;

wherein after retrieving the published electronic content from the interactive book format objects, display of the published electronic content is independent of the interactive book format specification, while adhering to the formatting and desired presentation of a publisher;

wherein the published electronic content is stored in a relational database residing in computer memory by using the software system, or on a storage media, and wherein the relational database is embedded within the software system; and

wherein the relational database stores, for each paragraph of the published electronic content, a format object and a list of images attached to the each paragraph and wherein the format object and the list of images are used to recreate an original visual presentation and an original artwork associated with the published electronic content.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

enabling the reader to view the retrieved published electronic content using a screen display comprising at least one page of the published electronic content and a navigation display comprising at least one operating control menu.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one of the interactive book format objects further comprises a title, a pad length, a length of data, and data.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the interactive book format objects further comprise at least one of:

Library Object, Book List Object, table of contents Object, Title Pages Object, Chapter Object, Page Object, Paragraph List Object, Paragraph Object, Formatting Object and User Notes Object.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the published electronic content further comprises an additional content, which is associated with the Paragraph Object.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the additional content comprises at least one of:

formatting information, historical data, geographical data, biographical data, concordance, at least one image, at least one map, at least one sound, and at least one animation.

7. The method of claim 5, further comprising receiving the additional content from the reader or a user and storing the received additional content in the relational database, wherein the additional content comprises at least one of a note or a drawing related to a specific paragraph, and wherein the stored additional content is associated with a timestamp.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising providing the published electronic content to the reader by at least one of:

downloading the content from an Internet website or loading the published electronic content from a portable storage device that is physically inserted into an electronic reading system or a host computer of a reader.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein the published electronic content comprises an interactive book format Header and one or more binary interactive book format objects.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the published electronic content is stored on a portable storage device electronically read by a system, enabling the stored published electronic content to be loaded into the relational database.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein upon a sale of the published electronic content, the sale is registered with a central interactive book format clearing house server that captures the sale for the publisher.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein an internet store making the sale of the published electronic content communicates with the central interactive book format clearing house to register the sale.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein upon registering of the sale of the published electronic content, the internet store generates a unique security key allowing the reader to read the sold published electronic content.