Managing Rights Management

Digimarc and FUOC Digital Watermarking Patents

New patents are issued by the USPTO on Tuesdays. Both of today's Spotlight Patents concern aspects of digital watermarking.  Assigned to Digimarc, the first patent addresses techniques for watermarking and signal recognition for managing and sharing captured content, metadata discovery and related arrangements. Assigned to Fundacio per a la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (ES), the second patent addresses techniques for audio watermarking in which watermark data is codified in a plurality of Fourier transform coefficients of the audio signal.

TDB and Mido Play Blockchain and DRM Patent Applications

New pending patent applications are published by the USPTO on Thursdays. Today's Spotlight Applications continue the theme of Blockchain (distributed ledger, block chain) and digital rights management broadly construed. Assigned to TDB (CA), the first application discloses techniques for a distributed electronic ledger with metadata. Assigned to Mido Play, Inc, the second application discloses techniques multiple legal game providers with digital ledger.

Verance Watermarking and Siemans Fingerprinting Patents

New patents are issued by the USPTO on Tuesdays. Today's Spotlight Patents concern aspects of digital watermarking and digital fingerprinting. Assigned to Verance, the first patent addresses techniques for watermark detection and metadata delivery associated with a primary content. Assigned to Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics, the second patent addresses using a certificate for a target device that includes encrypted system attributes that are then verified against attributes of the target device prior to software usage.

Digimarc and paSafeShare Watermarking Patents

New patents are issued by the USPTO on Tuesdays. Both of today's Spotlight Patents concern aspects of digital watermarking. Assigned to Digimarc, the first patent addresses techniques for watermarking and signal recognition for managing and sharing captured content, metadata discovery and related arrangements. Assigned to paSafeShare, the second patent addresses techniques including watermarking for securely distributing content.

Sony Watermarking and Microsoft Fingerprinting Patent Applications

New pending patent applications are published by the USPTO on Thursdays. Today's Spotlight Applications concern aspects of digital watermarking and digital fingerprinting. Assigned to Sony (JP), the first application discloses techniques for distributing metadata embedded in video. Assigned to Microsoft, the second application discloses techniques for communicating metadata that identifies a current speaker.

Intertrust and Broadcom 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 Intertrust technologies, the first patent addresses techniques for fragmented file sharing. Assigned to Broadcom, the second patent addresses mobile payTV DRM architectures.

IBM and Blue Spike Watermarking Patent Applications

On Thursdays the USPTO publishes new pending patent applications. Both of today's Spotlight Applications address aspects of digital watermarking. Assigned to IBM, the first application discloses techniques for metadata embedding in streaming medical data. Apparently assigned to Blue Spike, Inc., the second application discloses security techniques based on subliminal and supraliminal channels for data objects.

CES 2010: DRM Is Alive And Well - Part 1

The 2010 Consumer Electronics Show was very upbeat, perhaps more so than two years ago (last year doesn't count given the economic implosion resulting in widespread malaise and depression). Of course the purpose of the these shows is to drum up excitement. 3D TV (not quite ready for prime time in my view, but I did not spend much time looking), Mobile, and Auto seemed to be the principal sectors leading the charge.

Having seen a lot of the show (at the expense of my feet), one conclusion is that rights management, broadly construed, is everywhere. In saying this, I'm taking a very expansive view of rights management to include both technical and non-technical--largely business model factors--means of protecting digital content. I'm excluding from consideration music CDs and related issues since there does not seem to be a good solution specific to the CD problem that is acceptable to privacy and consumer advocates.

In giving a few selected examples of how rights management is being further insinuated into services and business models, I'm leaving out many vendors (apologies to those not mentioned). I'm sure that critics will be able to find counter examples  My goal here is simply to identify trends.

Various parties with DRM and related solutions were at the show, including Irdeto and Digital Containers. HDMI Licensing had a booth as well. Metadata company Gracenote had a  booth that also highlighted customer applications. Executives from Widevine were in town but did not have a booth.

Media futurist Gerd Leonhard (among others) have long argued that the future of media is and should be streaming rather than downloading files. The 2010 CES makes it perfectly clear that the world is moving substantially toward media streaming. More in the next installment. 

Vobile Fingerprinting and Cryptography Research Watermarking DVD Patent Applications

Every Thursday the USPTO publishes new patent applications. Both of today's Spotlight applications address optical disc content security. Assigned to Vobile, the first application discloses techniques for fingerprinting and identifying digital versatile disc (DVDs). Assigned to CRI, the second application discloses a content security layer providing long-term renewable security that includes content watermarking.

Metadata, Metadata, Who Has The Metadata

Yesterday's blogicle noted that metadata will be increasingly important component of DRM 3.0. The Wiki article on the subject points out that metadata has a broad range of meanings, uses, and contexts that share in common the idea of "data about data." Regarding rights management and related areas, metadata describes various objects, including, but by no means limited to, books, serial publications, music, and audiovisual works.

A wide variety of international, open, and proprietary standards exist for various kinds of real and digital objects. Among the latter are the well known ISBNs for books and the ISSNs for serial publications. The familiar barcoded UPCs are administered by a global non-for-profit organization, GS1, that has affiliates in the US and numerous other countries.

DRM 3.0 Has Arrived

Following several conversations with senior executives from several different companies, I've come away from the CES show thinking that the next generation of DRM has arrived. The outlines of DRM 3.0 have been clear for the past several months, but two themes emerged from my various discussions.

The first is that despite the apparent death of DRM in the music world, rights management is being reinvented as network layer and backend sets of processes and services. Network providers will increasingly play traffic cops and apply rules such as "don't allow transmission of the copyrighted material" across our network. Similar functions are being developed / applied in the User Generated Content world (UGC).