New patents are issued by the USPTO on Tuesdays. Both of today's Spotlight Patents concern aspects of digital rights management. Assigned to IBM, the first patent addresses techniques for digital rights management (DRM)-enabled policy management for an identity provider in a federated environment. Assigned to Sprint, the second patent addresses techniques for delivering digital content to a mobile device via a digital rights clearing house.
9,836,702, "Digital rights management (DRM)-enabled policy management for an identity provider in a federated environment," assigned to IBM.
Abstract
A method operative at an identity provider enforces a digital rights management (DRM) scheme associated with a piece of content. The identity provider is an entity that participates in a "federation" with one or more other entities including, for example, an service provider (e.g., a content provider), a DRM privileges provider, and a DRM policy provider. In one embodiment, the method begins by having the identity provider obtain and evaluate against a DRM policy a set of DRM privileges associated with the end user requesting access to the piece of content. Based on the evaluation, the identity provider generates a single sign on (SSO) message that includes a reference to the set of DRM privileges. The message is then forward to the service provider entity, which provides the end user a response.
9,838,869, "Delivering digital content to a mobile device via a digital rights clearing house," assigned to Sprint Communications Company L.P.
Abstract
Embodiments of the disclosure relate generally to methods and systems for delivering digital or media content to a mobile device and associating the digital rights for the content with an identifier of the mobile device or user of the mobile device. In some embodiments, a clearing house may store the digital rights for the content and provide authorization for delivery requests from the mobile device. In some embodiments, the mobile device may receive the content via communication with one or more of: the clearing house, a media provider, and/or a transport provider.
