Every Thursday, the US Patent and Trademark Office publishes pending patent applications. Publication has no bearing on whether a patent will eventually be issued based on the application. Still, issued patents and published applications are often indicators of what people have been thinking about and the kinds of things that individuals or companies believe may be useful to them in the future. The first of today's applications, assigned to Digimarc, addresses rights management using digital watermarking. Assigned to IBM (published last week), the second application discloses ways of controlling with rights objects delivery of broadcast encryption content for a network cluster from a content server outside the cluster.
20060062426, "Rights management systems and methods using digital watermarking," assigned to Digimarc.
Abstract
A digital watermark (DWM) content identifier is steganographically embedded in content. The DWM content identifier provides a link to a rights registry storing usage rights associated with the content. In some implementations the rights registry provides an association between the DWM content identifier and a digital rights management (DRM) content identifier. The DRM content identifier is used to find associated usage rights. The DWM content identifier can also be used to transfer content from a first DRM system to a second DRM system.
20060059573, "Controlling with rights objects delivery of broadcast encryption content for a network cluster from a content server outside the cluster," assigned to IBM.
Abstract
Methods, systems, and products are disclosed for controlling with rights objects delivery of broadcast encryption content for a network cluster from a content server outside the cluster that include receiving in the content server from a network device a key management block for the cluster, a unique data token for the cluster, and an encrypted cluster id; calculating a binding key for the cluster in dependence upon the key management block for the cluster, the unique data token for the cluster, and the encrypted cluster id; inserting a title key into a rights object defining rights for the broadcast encryption content; and sending the rights object to the cluster. In typical embodiments, the rights for content include an authorization for a play period and an authorized number of copies of the broadcast encryption content to devices outside the cluster.
