US 7,502,945 B2
Using a flexible rights template to obtain a signed rights label (SRL) for digital content in a rights management system
Steven Bourne, Seattle, Wash. (US); Marco A. DeMello, Bellevue, Wash. (US); Jason Cahill, Carnation, Wash. (US); Lauren Antonoff, Seattle, Wash. (US); Chandramouli Venkatesh, Redmond, Wash. (US); and Prashant Malik, Sammamish, Wash. (US)
Assigned to Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, Wash. (US)
Filed on Mar. 05, 2004, as Appl. No. 10/793,997.
Application 10/793997 is a continuation in part of application No. 10/185278, filed on Jun. 28, 2002.
Prior Publication US 2004/0243819 A1, Dec. 02, 2004
Int. Cl. G06F 7/04 (2006.01); G06F 11/30 (2006.01); H04K 1/00 (2006.01); G06F 1/00 (2006.01); G06F 21/00 (2006.01); G06F 21/24 (2006.01); G06F 17/00 (2006.01)
U.S. Cl. 713—193  [726/27; 705/59] 11 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method of publishing digital content to enable a license server to issue a digital license corresponding to the content to one or more users desiring to render the content, the method comprising:
encrypting the content according to a content key (CK) to result in (CK(content));
protecting the content key (CK) according to a public key for the license server (PU-RM);
retrieving a rights template, the rights template comprising information identifying a pre-defined set of users, pre-defined rights for each defined user, and pre-defined use conditions, the rights template adapted for repeated use in defining rights to a plurality of pieces of content;
retrieving rights data to be associated with the content from the retrieved rights template;
retrieving rules for modifying the retrieved rights data from the retrieved rights template;
modifying the retrieved rights data from the rights template according to the rules;
submitting the rights data and the protected content key (CK)) as a rights label to the license server for signing thereby, the license server validating the rights label and, if valid, creating a digital signature based on a private key (PR-RM) corresponding to (PU-RM) and based at least in part on the rights data to result in a signed rights label (SRL) and returning the SRL;
receiving the returned SRL and concatenating such received SRL with (CK(content)) to form a content package; and
distributing the content package to the one or more users, whereby a user desiring to render the content retrieves the SRL from the content package and submits the retrieved SRL to the license server as part of a request for the license corresponding to the content, whereby the license server verifies the signature of the SRL based on (PU-RM) and based at least in part on the protected rights data, accesses the rights data in the SRL and reviews same to determine whether the user is entitled to the license, and if so issues the license to the user, the license including (CK) in a protected form accessible to the user.