Managing Rights Management

Intel and CSC Holdings DRM Patents

New patents are issued by the USPTO on Tuesdays. Both of today's Spotlight Patents concern aspects of digital rights management. Assigned to Intel, the first of today's patents addresses technologies for supporting multiple digital rights management protocols on a client device. Assigned to CSC Holdings, the second patent addresses techniques for a flexible video-on-demand viewing period that is varied depending on whether the customer has completed viewing the entire program, allowing the viewing period to be extended if the customer has not completed viewing the entire program.

Disney and Broadcom DRM Patents

The USPTO issues new patents on Tuesdays. This week's Spotlight Patents concern aspects of digital rights management. Assigned to Disney, the first patent addresses techniques related to a digital receipt for use with an interoperable keychest. Assigned to Broadcom, the second patent addresses techniques for the automatic conversion of multimedia information from a first format to a second format in a broadband access gateway and/or network-based server.

Arris Enterprises and Thomson DRM Patent Applications

Thursdays the USPTO publishes new pending patent applications. Both of this posting's Spotlight Applications concern aspects of digital rights management. Assigned to Arris Enterprises, the first application discloses techniques for fault-tolerant configuration and orchestration among multiple DRM systems.  Assigned to Thomson (FR), the second application discloses techniques for bonding contents on separate storage media by creating a virtual file system.

Spayce and Intel DRM Patent Applications

New pending patent applications are published on Thursdays by the USPTO. Both of today's Spotlight Applications concern aspects of digital rights management. Assigned to Spayce, the first application discloses a virtual property system for collecting content files associated with a physical object having a unique identifier. Assigned to Intel, the second application discloses techniques for supporting multiple digital rights management protocols on a client device.

Canopy and MobiTV DRM Patent Applications

New pending patent applications are published by the PTO on Thursdays. Both of today's Spotlight Applications concern aspects of digital rights management. Assigned to Canopy, The first application discloses an enhanced detachable sensory-interface device for a wireless personal communication device.  Assigned to MobiTV, the second application discloses techniques for media rights management on multiple devices.

LG and Samsung DRM Patents

Happy New Year!  The PTO issues new patents on Tuesdays. Both of today's Spotlight Patents concern aspects of digital rights management. Assigned to LG Electronics (KR), the first patent addresses techniques for transmitting a resource and providing information in a resource in a Digital Rights Management (DRM) interoperable system. Assigned to Samsung (KR), the second patent addresses techniques for using secure removable media (SRM) in digital rights management.

InterDigital and Samsung DRM Patents

Tuesdays the PTO issues new patents. Both of today's Spotlight Patents concern aspects of digital rights management. Assigned to InterDigital, the first patent addresses techniques for digital rights management using trusted processing methods. Assigned to Samsung (KR), the second patent addresses techniques for digital rights management provisioning that  can easily provide content using one or more DRM systems.

Adobe and General Instrument DRM Patent Applications

Thursdays the PTO publishes new patent applications. Both of today's Spotlight Applications concern aspects of digital rights management. Apparently assigned to Adobe, the first application discloses techniques for migration between digital rights management systems without content repackaging. Assigned to General Instrument, the second application discloses techniques for content rights protection with arbitrary correlation of second content.

LG and ETRI DRM Patents

Tuesdays the PTO issues new patents. Both of this week's Spotlight Patents concern aspects of digital rights management. Assigned to LG Electronics (KR), the first patent addresses techniques for sharing rights object in digital rights management. Assigned to the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (KR), the second patent addresses techniques for interoperable digital rights management.

Audible Magic and Digital Keystone DRM Patents

Tuesdays the patent office issues new patents. Both of today's Spotlight Patents concern aspects of digital rights management. Assigned to Audible Magic, the first of today's patents concerns techniques for copyright detection and protection. Assigned to Digital Keystone, the second patent concerns techniques for conditional access and digital rights management.

Samsung and Adobe DRM Patent Applications

Thursdays the PTO publishes new pending patent applications. Both of today's Spotlight Applications concern aspects of digital rights management. Assigned to Samsung (KR), the first application discloses techniques for providing cloud-based digital rights management service. Assigned to Adobe, the second application discloses techniques for porting digital rights management service to multiple computing platforms.

Follett and Ericsson DRM Patent Applications

Thursdays the Patent Office publishes new pending patent applications. Both of today's Spotlight Applications concern aspects of digital rights management. Assigned to Follett, the first application discloses techniques for distributing digital content to customers at a plurality of points of transaction that allows each content provider to use its own method of digital rights management. Assigned to Ericsson, the second application discloses techniques for establishing a secured communication channel using a digital rights management agent.

Microsoft and Postech DRM Patents

Tuesdays the Patent Office issues new patents. Both of today's Spotlight Patents address aspects of digital rights management. Assigned to Microsoft, the first of today's patents concerns techniques for managing domains for digital media. Assigned to Postech Academy--Industry Foundation (KR), the second patent concerns techniques for providing DRM interoperability.

Adobe and Microsoft DRM Patents

Even on New Years, the USPTO issues new patents on Tuesdays. Both of today's Spotlight Patents address aspects of digital rights management. Assigned to Adobe, the first patent concerns techniques for protecting a document with multiple digital rights management systems. Assigned to Microsoft, the second of today's patents concerns the use of DRM to secure and monitize modular software defined radio components.

Disney and ATT DRM Patent Applications

On Thursdays the USPTO publishes pending patent applications. Both of today's Spotlight Applications concern aspects of digtial rights management. Assigned to Disney, the first application discloses techniques for interoperable digital rights management. Assigned to AT&T, the second application discloses techniques for distributing digital content using DRM.

Samsung and ETRI DRM Patents

On Tuesdays the USPTO issues new patents. Both of today's Spotlight Patents concern aspects of digital rights management. Assigned to Samsung (KR), the first patent addresses techniques for temporarily using DRM contents. Assigned to ETRI (KR), the second patent addresses techniques for executing interoperable digital rights management

Disney and Samsung DRM Patents

On Tuesdays the USPTO issues new patents. Both of today's Spotlight Patents concern aspects of digital rights management. Assigned to Disney, the first patent addresses techniques for interoperable DRM. Assigned to Samsung, the second patent addresses techniques for processing digital rights objects.

Adobe and IBM DRM Patents

On Tuesdays the USPTO issues new patents. Both of today's Spotlight Patents address aspects of digital rights management. Assigned to Adobe, the first patent concerns techniques for the dynamic enabling of functionality in electronic document readers. Assigned to IBM, the second patent concerns universal DRM support for devices.

Samsung and General Instrument DRM Patent Applications

On Thursdays the USPTO publishes new pending patent applications. Both of today's Spotlight Applications concern aspects of digital rights management. Assigned to Samsung (KR), the first application discloses interoperability techniques for selecting a specific DRM service from among multiple services. Assigned to General Instrument, the second application discloses techniques for cross-domain DRM registration.

LG and Britesmart DRM Patents

On Tuesdays the USPTO issues new patents. Both of today's Spotlight Patents concern aspects of digital rights management. Assigned to LG Electronics (KR), the first patent addresses techniques for an DRM interoperable system.  Assigned to Britesmart, the second patent addresses techniques to use, share and manage digital content by assigning MAC and IP adress to each device and peripheral.

NullRing and Sony DRM Patents

On Tuesdays the USPTO issues new patents. Both of today's Spotlight Patents concern aspects of digital rights management. Assigned to NullRing, the first patent pertains to techniques for limiting access to sensitive data. Assigned to Sony, the second patent pertains to key sharing techniques for DRM interoperability.

ETRI and Microsoft DRM Patent Applications

On Thursdays the USPTO publishes new pending patent applications. Both of today's Spotlight Applications address aspects of DRM. Assigned to the Electronics And Telecommunications Research Institute (KR), the first application discloses techniques relating to interoperability and DRM. Assigned to Microsoft, the second application discloses techniques for identifying DRM licenses.

Two DRM Patent Applications

On Thursdays the USPTO publishes new pending patent applications. Both of today's Spotlight Applications concern aspects of DRM. Assigned to ConDel, the first application discloses techniques for performing interoperable digital rights management among different operating system platforms. The second application discloses techniques for copyright detection and protection, no assignee given.

Microsoft and Nokia DRM Patents

On Tuesdays the USPTO publishes new patents. Both of today's Spotlight Patents concern aspects of DRM. Assigned to Microsoft, the first patent concerns techniques for converting content protection from conditional access to DRM systems. Assigned to Nokia, the second patent concerns techniques for dynamically enforcing digital rights management rules.

The CCIA On Interoperability and DRM

As noted, the Federal Trade Commission will hold a public hearing in Seattle on DRM and it's impact on consumers. More than 800 submissions were received, including several from various vendors and trade associations. Among the latter submitting written comments from the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), a trade association dedicated to open markets, open systems, and open networks.

Among the arguments presented by the CCIA is that legal restrictions on reverse engineering under the Digital Millenium Copy Right Act (DMCA) are too severe and are being used by some vendors to place restrictions on competitors and to prevent interoperability.

Adobe Opens Up RTMP But Keeps DRM Under Wraps

Ars Technica reports that Adobe is opening up its Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP), its widely used streaming media protocol. At the same time, Adobe is taking legal steps to protect the DRM components used in conjunction with RTMP.

Adobe has declined publish details about RTMP's DRM mechanism and will expressly forbid implementation of DRM circumvention measures in the license that governs the official RTMP specification.

"To benefit customers who want to protect their content, the open RTMP specification will not include Adobe's unique secure RTMP measures, nor will the license that accompanies the specification allow developers to circumvent such measures," the company revealed in a statement.

InformationWeek - Another Apple Anti-trust Law Suit

InformationWeek reports that another anti-trust suit requesting class action status has been filed against Apple. To promote interoperability, part of the suit demands that Apple open its platforms to other DRM standards and media formats. But in all these cases the first order of business is to assert that the company in fact has one or more monopolies:

The complaint against Apple claims that the company controls 75% of the online video market, 83% of the online music market, more than 90% of the hard-drive based music player market, and 70% of the Flash-based music player market.

Digital Living Network Alliance to Issue Interoperable DRM RFP

EE TImes says that the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) will issue an RFP for interoperable DRM perhaps based on the work of the CORAL Consortium.

Scott Smyers, president of DLNA, said he has seen evidence content and service providers are beginning to work with Coral's technology. An increasing number of the companies have been actively participating in DLNA recently. They have formed their own task group within DLNA and have been engaged in the DRM effort, Smyers said.  Coral essentially described a method in which content or service providers can express in a standard manner the digital rights a user has purchased with a piece of content. Those rights can then be transferred from the DRM used in one system to the DRM in another.

Standardizing rights expression is, of course, an important prerequisite for interoperability. More important and difficult problems result from the fact that classes of devices and members of the same device class may vary in their abilities to enforce the rights associated with protected content. For example, there needs to be agreement regarding what happens when content shows up on a device that lacks the sophistication to enforce the associated rights. Does the device refuse to play the content? Are the rights ignored?