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.
Assigned to Samsung, the first of today's applications discloses DRM with content having multiple parts. Assigned to IBM, the second application discloses ways of dynamically extending a DRM system using authenticated external Digital Property Rights (DPR) modules.
20070209078, "Method and apparatus for importing content having plurality of parts," assigned to Samsung.
Abstract
A digital content protection apparatus and method for digital rights management (DRM) are provided in which a content file including a plurality of content parts is imported such that a header is included which stores location information required for decoding each of the content parts. Therefore, the number of content parts constituting the content file can be recognized, and a license that is required for the use of each of the content parts can be acquired by analyzing header information without necessitating the parsing of the transport packets of the content file. Accordingly, preparation time for using content can be reduced.
20070208742, "System And Method For Dynamically Extending A DRM System Using Authenticated External DPR Modules," assigned to IBM.
Abstract
A rights management module controls access to a data set by processing requests for flexibly defined types of access to the data set and determines if the requested access may be granted. The requester's right for the requested type of access is verified by a verification module that may be part of the rights management core or verified through expansion rights verification modules. Extension verification modules may be contained within the data set itself or obtained from a separate store. Extension verification modules are authenticated by the rights management core.
