Managing Rights Management

Toshiba and Sony Watermarking Issued Patents

Tuesdays the USPTO issues new patents. Both of today's Spotlight Patents address various aspects of watermarking. Assigned to Toshiba, the first patent concerns techniques for embedding and analyzing watermarks. Assigned to Sony, the second patent concerns watermarking and transferring material. 7,443,999, "Digital watermark embedding apparatus and method, and digital watermark... Read more →

Could The Economy Derail Blu-Ray?

Could the bad economy kill Blu-ray? That's the question asked by Ed Oswald posting on Technologizer. ...economic troubles could be exactly what the rest of the industry needs to play catch-up. Streaming media seems to be the logical viable competitor, but it still needs probably another year or two yet... Read more →

Digital Rights Management Patent Applications

On Thursdays the USPTO publishes new patent applications. Both of today's Spotlight Applications address various aspects of DRM. The first application discloses techniques for generating teaser advertisements and providing content, no assignee given. Assigned to Samsung (KR), the second application discloses techniques for DRM and for DRM-enabled devices. 20080262922, "Contents,... Read more →

ATI and Samsung Copy Protection Issued Patents

On Tuesdays the USPTO issues new patents. Today's Spotlight Patents deal with aspects of video copy protection in analog and analog/digital video. Assigned to ATI Technologies, the first patent concerns the detection of copy protection indicators or redistribution control indicators in an analog video signal. Assigned to Samsung, the second... Read more →

Jobs: Blu-ray A "Bag of Hurt"

Paul Sweeting's article on ContentAgenda is worth a read. The royalty stack for Blu-ray and implementation issues, especially on laptops where battery life is critical, seem to have pushed Apple away from Blu-ray and toward iTunes High Def downloads. Between the new intellectual property in the physical format, BD-Java, AACS... Read more →

Macrovision and Nagravision Patent Applications

On Thursdays the USPTO publishes new patent applications. Today's Spotlight Applications concern copy protection and conditional access systems. Assigned to Macrovision, the first application discloses techniques for the copy protection of optical discs. Assigned to Nagravision, the second application discloses a conditional access system. 20080247289, "Copy protection of optical discs,"... Read more →

Sony and Toshiba Watermarking Patents

On Tuesdays the USPTO issues new patents. Both of today's Spotlight Patents address various aspects of watermarking. Assigned to Sony, the first patent concerns techniques for data recording that employ watermarking. Assigned to Toshiba, the second patent concerns techniques for detecting digital watermarks. 7,436,959, "Data recording apparatus and recording method,"... Read more →

Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't?

A cartoon "take" on the DRM dilemma facing music downloaders from Randall Munroe's xkcd.com webcomic site: Read more →

Intel Added to List of Blu-ray BD+ Developers

The Blu-ray BD+ licensing authority maintains a list of BD+ adopters. BD+ is the virtual machine-based programmable security component of the Blu-ray security architecture. Since I last checked, four companies have been added to the list of adopters: Intel, Lite-On IT Corp., MIT Technology, and Quatius Ltd. have been added... Read more →

The Ins and Outs of Blu-ray Disc Replication and Licensing

eMediaLive has another great posting on the economics of Blu-ray licensing fees, this time written by Hugh Bennett. The topics covered include manufacturing costs and licensing fees for the two security and copy protection technologies: AACS renewable encryption and the BD+ programmable security, which is summarized in Bennett's table: Read more →