US 5,910,987 · Granted 1999-06-08

The 1999 Patent That Invented Digital Rights Management

Imagine you buy a song online—this patent describes a system that lets the seller control exactly how many times you can listen to it, on which devices, and whether you can share it. It's like a digital lock that follows your files around and enforces invisible rules about who gets to use what.

Curated and verified by the IsItPatented Editorial team

The plain-English version

What it protects

The claim covers a distributed system for controlling how electronic information is accessed and used after it's sold or shared. What's protected here is the architecture and methods for embedding security rules into digital files themselves—so that computers and devices can enforce restrictions on copying, sharing, playing, or distributing that content, even after it leaves the seller's hands. The system uses tamper-resistant hardware and software checks at each step to monitor and meter usage.

Why it matters

This patent is foundational to digital rights management (DRM) technology, which became central to how music, movies, ebooks, and software are sold online. Intertrust Technologies licensed these concepts to major tech and media companies, making the patent portfolio commercially significant in the emerging digital commerce space of the late 1990s and 2000s. It established one of the earliest legal frameworks for enforcing invisible digital restrictions on consumer goods.

Real-world use

When you buy a movie on iTunes or an ebook from Amazon, the security system that prevents you from copying it to unlimited devices or sharing it freely traces back to concepts locked down by patents like this one.

Original USPTO abstract

The present invention provides systems and methods for secure transaction management and electronic rights protection. Electronic appliances such as computers equipped in accordance with the present invention help to ensure that information is accessed and used only in authorized ways, and maintain the integrity, availability, and/or confidentiality of the information. Such electronic appliances provide a distributed virtual distribution environment (VDE) that may enforce a secure chain of handling and control, for example, to control and/or meter or otherwise monitor use of electronically stored or disseminated information. Such a virtual distribution environment may be used to protect rights of various participants in electronic commerce and other electronic or electronic-facilitated transactions. Distributed and other operating systems, environments and architectures, such as, for example, those using tamper-resistant hardware-based processors, may establish security at each node. These techniques may be used to support an all-electronic information distribution, for example, utilizing the "electronic highway.

Patent details

Publication number: US 5,910,987
Filing date: 1996-12-04
Grant date: 1999-06-08
Assignee: Intertrust Technologies Corp.
Inventor(s): GINTER; KARL L., SHEAR; VICTOR H., SPAHN; FRANCIS J., VAN WIE; DAVID M.
CPC class: G06Q50/184

View original record on Google Patents →

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