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 copyright infringement prevention. Assigned to EMC, the second patent addresses techniques for secure search.
9,904,497, "Copyright infringement prevention," assigned to IBM.
Abstract
In an approach for determining printability of an electronic file, a computer electronically receives a file for printing. The computer parses the file for one or more of text, images, and formatting indicative of potential copyrighted material. The computer, in response to identifying any text, images, or formatting indicative of potential copyrighted material, identifies potential copyrighted material within the file. The computer determines whether the file may be printed based, at least in part, on the identified potential copyrighted material. In another approach for determining printability of an electronic document, a computer electronically receives a document for printing. The computer locates attributes associated with the document and stored in a separate database, which includes one or more of the following: ownership, licensing information, printability, and number of prints allowed. The computer determines the document is printable based on the attributes and prints the document.
9,904,602, "Secure search," assigned to EMC.
Abstract
Backup objects, native security descriptors that describe access rights to the backup objects, and object metadata are received from platforms where each backup object has corresponding object metadata. Each native security descriptor is transformed into a platform independent security descriptor. A partitioned structure is generated, including by associating each platform independent security descriptor with those object metadata that correspond to the plurality of backup objects for which that platform independent security descriptor describes access rights to.