Cryptographic DRM

Closed

Prize $5,000

Status Competed

Description

Patexia seeks prior art for US Patent 7,079,649 (US ‘649) which allegedly describes a method of implementing a digital rights management system (DRM) by cryptographically protecting desired data through a server-client relationship facilitated over the Internet, and restricting copy and save functions at the client as to that data.

With the advent of broadband internet, it has never been easier to distribute creative content to an artist’s fans (and future fans) wherever they might be. However, because digital content is easily copied and transferred, the old content assumptions (where copyright protection was designed to protect against physically copying and financially benefiting from someone else’s work) no longer apply.

Digital rights management was developed as a way of ensuring that content creators are protected from those who might exploit their digital content. The main challenge of DRM is to balance between making sure that illegitimate users cannot steal digital content, while not impeding legitimate users and still making it easy to distribute content to future fans.

The patent in this Contest allegedly implements a DRM system by cryptographically securing data on a server, distributing a program to run on a client computer to decrypt the content, and restricting the client’s ability to copy or save the decrypted data.

The patent describes this DRM system as:

encrypting data in a cryptographic scheme
generating a program on the server that will facilitate this DRM system
when the client wants to access the protected content, downloading the program onto the client
once installed, using the program to request from the server the cryptographically protected data
downloading the protected data
once the program is fully running and the download is complete, using the program to decrypt the data
restricting or outright preventing the client computer’s ability to copy or save the decrypted data

Additionally, the patent describes an authentication method where:

the server and the client both independently store a cryptographic key and a unique identifier for the client
when the server needs to authenticate the client, the server sends a request to the client
in response, the client prepares a signed hash created from the cryptographic key and the unique identifier, and send the signed hash back to the server
meanwhile, the server independently creates a signed hash from its version of the cryptographic key and a unique identifier for the client
to authenticate the client, the server compares the received signed hash with the signed hash it created
if the hashes match, the server has authenticated the client and it will use the cryptographic key to encrypt the data and transmit it to the client
if the hashes do not match, the server knows the client is not authenticated and does not have permission to access the client

Finally, the patent describes a process of steganographically marking the data as protected; steganography being a method of encrypting data in plain sight so that the encryption would not be obvious to a typical observer.

Figure 3. A basic overview of the server-client relationship.

Details

Prior Art Search

This is a Prior Art Search contest aimed at determining if a patent idea was known and publicly available before a patent was filed.

This contest will close on Sunday, August 17th, 2014 at 11:59 PM PST.

Please review the Contest Rules. For more information on how to submit to this Contest type, please read the Intro to Prior Art Search page.

Please review the full list of known references.

Patexia Contest Rss Feed

Cryptographic DRM