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. Here are two assigned to ContentGuard Holdings.
6,895,503, "Method and apparatus for hierarchical assignment of rights to documents and documents having such rights," assigned to ContentGuard Holdings, Inc.
Abstract
Digital rights management allows one or more of usage rights and delegation rights to be associated with a document. Through the use of the usage rights and the delegation rights, a hierarchy of rights associated with a document is created that provides a tree-type structure of rights extending from the content owner down through one or more users.
6,895,392, "Usage rights grammar and digital works having usage rights created with the grammar,"
Abstract
A system for associating usage rights with digital works, a method for creating usage rights with a grammar, and usage rights created with a grammar. The system includes a mechanism for creating usage rights from a grammar. The usage rights specify a manner of use indicating one or more stated purposes for which the digital work can be at least one of used and distributed by an authorized party. The usage rights are associated with a digital work.
