New patents are issued by the USPTO on Tuesdays. Both of today's Spotlight Patents concern aspects of digital rights management. Assigned to Philips, the first patent addresses techniques for digital rights management, in which access to a piece of content is granted in accordance with a license owned by a license owner to a client who is a member of a domain. Assigned to HGST Netherlands (NL), the second patent addresses techniques for a digital rights management system that includes a storage module that stores a usage right for digital content in a tamper-resistant portion of a memory.
9,460,271, "DRM system," assigned to Philips (NL)
Abstract
A method of and system for digital rights management, in which access to a piece of content is granted in accordance with a license owned by a license owner to a client who is a member of a domain. This requires successfully verifying that a membership relation exists between the client and the domain as reflected in a first state variable, and that an association relation exists between the license owner and the domain as reflected in a second state variable. Both relationships are revoked by executing an online protocol between the parties in the relationship after which both remove the corresponding state variable. The domain controller propagates the state administration relating to the domain is propagated to the client so that the client can update its state administration.9,460,027, "Digital rights management system," assigned to HGST Netherlands B.V. (NL)
Abstract
Disclosed herein is a digital rights management system that includes a storage module that stores a usage right for digital content in a tamper-resistant portion of a memory. The system also includes a flag status module that generates a flag corresponding with a transfer status of the usage right, sets the flag to one of a plurality of transfer statuses, and stores the flag in the tamper-resistant portion of the memory. The transfer statuses include a status indicating a request for the usage right was generated by a device with a usage right recovery mechanism.
