Recently Issued Patents

The US Patent Office issues new patents on Tuesdays. Issued patents and published applications  may be early indicators of the kinds of issues being addressed by inventors and/or the companies for whom they work. Here are two recent patents relating to rights management.  The first, assigned to Cisco, involves digial identifiers, which is a hot topic these days. Various standards groups along with ContentGuard among others are very active in this area. Speaking of ContentGuard, the second patent is assigned to them and addresses ways to enhance the security of protected objects by keeping the object encrypted for as long as possible.

6,885,999, "Digital identifiers and digital identifier control systems for intellectual properties," assigned to Cisco.

Abstract

A method and system thereof for controlling intellectual properties in an intellectual property management system. A unique digital identifier is assigned to each of the intellectual properties. The digital identifier includes an attribute associating a respective intellectual property to the intellectual property management system and an attribute specifying a source for the digital identifier. One class of digital identifier is assigned to all known instantiations of the respective intellectual property. A second class of digital identifies assigns a unique digital identifier to each specific instantiation of a respective intellectual property. The digital identifiers are stored in a registry. The digital identifier may also be embedded within the intellectual property, or it may be inscribed within a document or element which accompanies, proceeds, follows, or is otherwise related to the intellectual property. Characteristics and meta-data are also assigned to the intellectual property for searching, tracking, classifying and understanding the intellectual property.

6,885,748, "System and method for protection of digital works," assigned to ContentGuard Holdings, Inc.

Abstract

A method of protecting a digital work uses a format preserving encryption scheme to encrypt the digital work. This enables any native replay application or rendering application to transform an encrypted digital work into encrypted presentation data. The originator's digital content is protected in its original form by not being decrypted. This method enables the rendering or replay application to process the encrypted document into encrypted presentation data without decrypting it first. Encrypted presentation data is then decrypted just before it is displayed to the user. An additive encryption scheme is a particular type of encryption scheme which preserves formatting of a digital work