Conversation rights management

• US 8,301,879 B2
• Filed: 01/26/2009
• Issued: 10/30/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 01/26/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Ramanathan, Rajesh, Looney, William, Bhattacharjee, Avronil, Gupta, Amit
• Primary Examiner(s): LEMMA, SAMSON B
• Application Number:
  US12/359,485
• Publication Number:
  US 20100189260A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,373 Days
• Field of Search: 713/156, 380/255, 380/256, 380/259
• US Class Current: 713/156
• 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: H04L 12/1818 Conference organisation arrangements, e.g. handling schedules, setting up parameters needed by nodes to attend a conference, booking network resources, notifying involved parties
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/1822 Conducting the conference, e.g. admission, detection, selection or grouping of participants, correlating users to one or more conference sessions, prioritising transmission
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/1831 Tracking arrangements for later retrieval, e.g. recording contents, participants activities or behavior, network status
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2463/101 applying security measures for digital rights management data processing systems or methods, specially adapted for commerce, e.g. marketing, shopping, billing, auctions or e-commerce G06Q30/00
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/062 for key distribution, e.g. centrally by trusted party cryptographic mechanisms or cryptographic arrangements for key distribution involving a central third party H04L9/0819
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/10 for controlling access to devices or network resources
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1069 Session establishment or de-establishment
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1076 Screening of IP real time communications, e.g. spam over Internet telephony [SPIT]
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/155 involving storage of or access to video conference sessions tracking arrangements for later retrieval of a computer conference content or participants activities H04L12/1831

Abstract

Conversation rights for multi-modal communications are managed and enforced in an enhanced communication system. Through physical and/or software components, rights are assigned to a communication session and related components upon user request. Permitted participants of the session are provided access tools such as decryption keys. Restrictions based on the assigned conversation rights are extended to preserved recordings and associated documents of the communication session.

Claims

1. A method to be executed in a computing device for implementing conversation rights management, the method comprising:

receiving a request for creating a conversation rights based restriction for a communication session at a rights management server;

providing a license to a requesting first client application;

receiving another request from a second client application for the license, the second client application being invited to participate in the communication session with the first client application;

providing the license to the second client application in response to confirming the second client application is a trusted application and is capable of enforcing the conversation rights based restriction for the communication session;

notifying a third application of a denial to the license upon detecting the third application having a disabled rights management feature; and

facilitating the communication session between the first and the second client applications according to organizational, system, and user selected parameters associated with quality and quantity aspects of the communication session including at least one from a set of;

a video resolution, a voice quality, and attachable document limitations.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the license is at least one encryption key for use by the first and second client applications to encrypt and decrypt messages exchanged during the communication session.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the request for creating conversation rights based restriction is received at a time point that is one of:

before the communication session is initiated and during the communication session, and wherein the conversation rights based restriction is applied to at least one from a set of;

a recording of the communication session, a record associated with the communication session, and a document associated with the communication session.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving a further request from one of the first application and the second application to modify the conversation rights based restriction; and

providing a modified license to the requesting application.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the communication session is escalated from one of stored content and shared data, and the conversation rights based restriction associated with the communication session is applied to the one of stored content and shared data, from which the communication session is escalated.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the conversation rights based restriction is employed to determine at least one from a set of:

whether a user is permitted to join the communication session, whether the communication session is permitted to be recorded, access permissions for at least one from a set of;

a recording of the communication session, a record associated with the communication session, and a document associated with the communication session.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the conversation rights based restriction is applied to a document associated with the communication session such that the restriction is persisted when the document is consumed by a non-communication application including one from a set of:

a word processing application, a spreadsheet application, a presentation application, a calendaring application, a scheduling application, and an image processing application.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the communication session is a multi-modal communication session including at least one from a set of:

a voice communication, a video communication, a white-boarding session, a data sharing session, an application sharing session, an instant messaging session, and an email exchange.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the conversation rights based restriction is defined for one mode of the communication session and applied to all modes.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the conversation rights based restriction includes one from a set of:

“

off-the-record”

, “

private”

, “

restricted distribution”

, “

do not forward”

, “

do not reply”

, “

company confidential”

, “

company confidential with read-only restriction”

, “

distribution restricted to division”

, “

distribution restricted to department”

, “

do not escalate to conference”

, “

do not record”

, “

allow persons only”

, “

restrict to fulltime employees”

, and “

limited time preservation”

.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the license is an encryption key, and wherein at least one mode of the communication session and at least one document associated with the communication session are encrypted using the encryption key during an exchange between participants in the communication session.

12. A communication system for implementing conversation rights management, the system comprising:

a communication server configured to facilitate multi-modal communications between endpoints of the system;

a rights management server configured to;

provide an encryption key to a first endpoint in response to a request from the first endpoint;

receive a request from a second endpoint prompted by an invite sent by the first endpoint to the second endpoint;

determine if the second endpoint is a trusted endpoint and capable of enforcing conversation rights requested by the first endpoint; and

if so;

specify recording restrictions separately in a multi-modal communication session for components of the multi-modal communication session including modes and related documents transmitted through the encrypted messages;

insert recording restrictions in decryption information enforced on the encrypted messages; and

provide the decryption information to a second endpoint such that the encrypted messages are exchanged between the first and second endpoints to facilitate the multi-modal communication session;

else;

provide an error message to the second endpoint preventing the second endpoint from joining the multi-modal communication session.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the first and the second endpoints communicate with the rights management server employing Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), and wherein the encrypted messages are exchanged between the first and the second endpoints employing Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP).

14. The system of claim 13, wherein the conversation rights information is exchanged between the first endpoint, the second endpoint, and the rights management server employing Session Description Protocol (SDP) extensions, and wherein an endpoint attempting to join the multi-modal communication but incapable of complying with the applied conversation rights is denied access.

15. The system of claim 12, wherein the second endpoint is determined to be a trusted endpoint through authentication by a trust server of the communication system.

16. The system of claim 12, wherein the multi-modal communication is created without participants and relevant participants are added following an implementation of the conversation rights to the multi-modal communication, and wherein a conversation rights feature not implementable by one of the first and second endpoints is disabled.

17. A computer-readable memory device with instructions stored thereon for managing conversation rights through a multi-modal communication application, the instructions comprising:

providing a user interface to enable a user to initiate a communication session by selecting at least one communication mode, wherein the user is further enabled to specify a conversation rights status for the communication session;

obtaining at least one encryption key from a rights management server to be employed for enforcing the specified conversation rights status on the communication session;

specifying recording restrictions separately in the communication session for components of the communication session including modes and related documents;

notifying another communication application of a denial to the at least one encryption key upon determining the other communication application having a disabled rights management feature;

sending an invite message to the other communication application including the at least one encryption key upon determining the other communication application having an enabled rights management feature;

upon receiving a successful acceptance message from the other communication application, facilitating the communication session by exchanging messages encrypted with the at least one encryption key;

facilitating the communication session according to organizational, system, and user selected parameters associated with quality and quantity aspects of the communication session including at least one from a set of;

a video resolution, a voice quality, and attachable document limitations;

enforcing the recording restrictions on the communication session.

18. The computer-readable memory device of claim 17, wherein the communication session is held in a peer-to-peer communication system, and wherein a portion of applicable conversation rights are disabled based on capabilities of participating endpoints.

19. The computer-readable memory device of claim 17, wherein the user interface is further configured to display a conversation rights status of an active communication session and to enable the user to modify the conversation rights status of an active communication session without interrupting the communication session employing at least one of a graphical scheme and a color scheme.

20. The computer-readable memory device of claim 17, wherein with each applied conversation right, a schema is defined introducing applicable communication modes, physical endpoints, duration of the communication session, and associated data.