Blockchains (smart contracts, distributed ledgers) and rights management broadly construed are the themes of today's Spotlight Patents. Assigned to Aurign, the first patent addresses techniques for tracking authorship attribution and creating music publishing agreements from metadata. Assigned to IBM, the second patent addresses techniques for ad-hoc trusted groups on a blockchain.
11,158,014, "System and methods for tracking authorship attribution and creating music publishing agreements from metadata," assigned to Aurign, Inc.
Abstract
Systems and methods relating to a platform for creating, monitoring, updating, and executing legal agreements for data files such as a collaborate digital media file using associated metadata. The platform enables music publishing agreements to be generated automatically by taking metadata from a DAW (digital audio workstation) that reflects the activity and contributions of each author associated with a file. Authorship metadata can be recorded on a ledger or blockchain by the platform. The platform enables calculation and disbursement of royalties to be automated by algorithmic determination of terms of an authenticated smart contract using authorship metadata for an associated media file generating the royalty. Authors may concurrently contribute from across a variety of different DAWs, local and remote, and computing resources may be distributed by the platform.
11,159,307, "Ad-hoc trusted groups on a blockchain," assigned to IBM.
Abstract
An example operation may include one or more of identifying a group of blockchain member devices attempting to establish a trusted group communication channel, assigning each of the blockchain member devices public/private key pairs, publishing the public keys of the blockchain member devices in a list, identifying a request from a first blockchain member device requesting a private key, associated with a second blockchain member device, be applied to a predetermined nonce value, responsive to identifying a response to the request, verifying, via a public key assigned to the first blockchain member device, that the second blockchain member device is a trusted member of the group of blockchain member devices, and responsive to verifying the second blockchain member device is a trusted member of the group of blockchain member devices, permitting communication between the first blockchain member device and the second blockchain member device on the trusted group communication channel.
