Automated digital express gateway for licensing and acquiring rights and permissions for 3rd party copyrighted content

• US 8,438,113 B2
• Filed: 01/21/2011
• Issued: 05/07/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 01/25/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Richard Stahl
• Original Assignee: Richard Stahl
• Inventors: Stahl, Richard
• Primary Examiner(s): CHEUNG, CALVIN K
• Application Number:
  US13/010,806
• Publication Number:
  US 20110184871A1
• Time in Patent Office: 837 Days
• Field of Search: 705/54, 705/57, 705/59, 705/902, 715/743, 715/745, 726 28- 32
• US Class Current: 705/59
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/184 Intellectual property management

Abstract

The invention provides an end-to-end automated streaming workflow process which enables real-time or batch processing to grant licenses and to acquire licenses for 3^rd party copyrighted content. Using a computer, the invention automates the permissions transaction process of procuring and processing licenses real-time or by batch, reducing lead-times from many weeks or months to hours, automatically transforming and translating requests and responses for global e-commerce among multi-vendor systems and non-standard rights semantics and languages, eliminating or reducing manual labor effort, negotiating licensing fees to conform with specifications, protecting rights-holders'"'"' intellectual property rights and assuring rights-holders they are fairly compensated and paid for their work, identifying “public domain” and/or “fair use” works, saving companies time and money, while providing a competitive advantage for publishers and the enterprise.

Claims

1. A method of using a first computer that performs transaction steps which communicates via Internet or a secure electronic network to a second computer, comprising:

processing real time or batch requests among participants using disparate rights management systems and platforms, which include a content user “

CU”

or a rights requestor “

RR”

, a content provider “

CP”

or a rights holder “

RH”

or a rights depository/reproduction rights organization “

RRO”

;

connecting participants to an electronic Gateway for automated communications among the participants via Internet or the secure electronic network;

transforming each participant'"'"'s rights semantics and expressions to and from a common rights definition language “

RDL”

;

matching transformed responses from the content provider “

CP” and

the rights depository/reproduction rights organization “

RRO”

against the transformed rights semantics and expressions to and from the common rights definition language “

RDL”

from the content user “

CU”

;

modifying with the content provider “

CP” and

the rights depository/reproduction rights organization “

RRO”

for a conforming response;

processing acceptable conforming responses for 3rd party licenses of copyrighted content; and

accessing the electronic Gateway via Internet or the secure electronic network to input transactions;

wherein at least one of the first computer and the second computer;

transforms the copyrighted content into a usage right and

generates a license via the electronic Gateway which grants rights and

permissions for the copyrighted content;

wherein the participants are authenticated;

wherein the processing real time or batch requests among participants is switched from automated to manual processing in responsive to non-compliant transactions;

wherein the real time or batch requests are re-submitted in responsive to any prior non-conforming response;

wherein the electronic Gateway has a computer system for machine-to-machine communications for enabling secure electronic transactions processing among disparate computer systems and platforms;

wherein the electronic Gateway rejects a transaction and reverts to manual processing responsive to;

an unauthenticated request,

the content provider “

CP”

or the content user “

CU”

cannot be found, or

the rights semantics are ambiguous or cannot be transformed.