Method of distributing digital publications incorporating user generated and encrypted content with unique fingerprints

Abstract

Electronic publications are increasingly replacing physical media, where standards have evolved to mimic these physical media. Accordingly it is beneficial to provide electronic publication software systems and/or software applications to enable new paradigms that provide consumers, authors, publishers, retailers, and others with a method of publishing new electronic content in a manner wherein primary and secondary electronic content may be combined from multiple sources to generate said new electronic content which may be distributed based upon rights embedded within content elements. The method further comprising the ability to support community interactions within work and private environments; to re-assign licenses and issue sub-licenses; and to distribute said new electronic content with a unique fingerprint allowing unique identification of sources of non-authorised content.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A method relating to electronic content comprising:
 a server comprising at least a first processor and a first memory hosting and executing a first software application, the memory storing primary content relating to a publication and second content relating to the publication generated by a user;   an electronic device comprising at least a second processor, a second memory, a user interface and a display and hosting and executing a second software application; wherein   the electronic device and server communicate via a communications network to transfer merged, rendered, encrypted and fingerprinted primary and secondary content to the electronic device from the server and new secondary content to the server from the electronic device as generated by the user using the electronic device.   
     
     
         2 . The method according to  claim 1  wherein,
 the primary electronic content may be at least one of: 
 published in a secure encrypted manner from centralized servers to authorized users through licenses; 
 employ any combination of multimedia content meeting the appropriate structure of the publication formatting standard as the primary content; 
 allow automatic association of user annotations to subsequent releases of the primary content allowing such annotations to be maintained and appropriately positioned within the document; and 
 be handwritten, calligraphy, full Japanese katakana or Chinese kanji, or other formats through support of multimedia content as well as predetermined character sets. 
 
     
     
         3 . The method according to  claim 1  wherein,
 the secondary electronic content may be: 
 associated as annotations to the primary content wherein when added by a user may be set for automatic presentation to another user requiring the user to review and close rather than open so that important internal or external comments and updates relating to the primary content are captured, presented and not missed; 
 generalized combinations of multimedia content to form the annotations to the primary content; 
 citations and/or annotations associated with primary content which may be localized to an enterprise allowing enterprise specific citations/annotations to be distributed within the enterprise in conjunction with or in isolation from publisher citations/annotations in initial release and subsequent update(s)/release(s); 
 citations/annotations may be automatically associated to primary content through indexing of other elements of primary content which may be discretely or periodically released and to which user has may/may not have digital rights to but encouraging user to license for fuller content and exploitation of hypertext linking within annotations; 
 annotations may be managed through “curator” allowing users to have multiple status including active/inactive facilitating annotations at multiple levels such as private, group, project, organization, and public; and 
 users may have annotation rights that may be de-activated/re-activated with changing circumstances allowing users to access historical annotations. 
 
     
     
         4 . The method according to  claim 1  wherein,
 primary and secondary electronic content may be subsequently combined from multiple sources to generate a new eBook which may be sold with well documented flow-through licenses and revenue allocation based upon rights embedded to content elements. 
 
     
     
         5 . The method according to  claim 1  wherein,
 the primary and secondary electronic content may be: 
 crowd-sourced with subscriber confidence that unlike other social media blogs, bulletin boards etc those with the ability to add/publish citations with respect to primary content are licensees of the primary content; 
 offered in combination so that individuals or enterprises may create a set of annotations in respect to an item of primary content and by virtue of their reputation “publish” and sell these; and 
 licensees of primary content may select one or more “editors” for pre-generated secondary content relating to the primary content rather than a sole “editor.” 
 
     
     
         6 . The method according to  claim 1  wherein,
 primary and secondary electronic content may be associated with one or more communities wherein embodiments of the invention support: 
 public annotations to be visible to all licensees of primary content; 
 users may establish a community posting that does not need a relationship to already exist between individuals for content to be exchanged as the primary content is now the association; 
 the ability to host arbitrary secondary content allows for secondary content to be connected to a blog, micro-blog, or bulletin board which may be associated or discrete from a particular section of the primary content; 
 supports arbitrary link may be made to/from primary content from/to social media allowing content dispersal without requirement for pre-existing community or licenses; 
 linking of primary/secondary content through social media with extended duration or pervasiveness as the content does not disappear unlike conventional Uniform Resource Locator links as association is content rather than unique address of the content; and 
 non-licensed user browsing secondary/primary content posted but cannot access fully nor join other communities/leverage the software application and/or software system without licensing/purchasing the primary content. 
 
     
     
         7 . The method according to  claim 1  wherein,
 the software system supports re-assignable licenses and issuance of sub-licenses wherein; 
 content transfer is through fingerprinting delivered content wherein that fingerprint of the content is unique to the license issued allowing traceability of unauthorised releases of content which may be linked to both primary and/or secondary content; 
 concurrent licensing may be established through sub-licenses/re-assignable licenses which are applicable to primary/secondary content; 
 licenses may be re-assigned for arbitrary multimedia primary content so that a “curator” may re-assign thereby terminating original licensee rights thereby supporting the purchase and gifting of licensed content which is supported by existing standards or commercial systems such as Apple iTunes™ or iBooks™; 
 secondary content with associated primary content supports a revenue/publishing model wherein third party can then publish as independent publisher with follow-through rights to subsequent purchasers; and 
 primary content may be handled in a format supporting public libraries, research institutions etc as these are re-assignable licenses under control of “librarian” and the library may be validated for multiple concurrent licenses with predetermined validity. 
 
     
     
         8 . The method according to  claim 1  wherein,
 the software system supports: 
 merging of primary and secondary content to generate the content provided to the user of which the currently rendered display forms a predetermined portion where merging and rendering occur prior to display according to latest configuration settings; 
 rendering is achieved through a dual-window concept of “viewing” window, which reflects the portion rendered to the user in dependence upon user's device settings, device configuration, preferences etc, and a larger “retrieved” window, which defines the portion of the primary/secondary content merged and transferred to the user's device; 
 movement of viewing window within retrieved window in dependence of user actions to ensure smooth continuous rendering as user moves through document without pagination etc according to predetermined settings; 
 primary content search index generated when the content is initially published to the loaded by software system/software application and then stored with cross-reference to locations in primary content; 
 secondary content search index generated and augmented to primary content index for user allowing index functionality not present in alternate publishing formats since searches may be customised to the user/enterprise; 
 search indices linked to content allowing more complex search rules than generally available in other publishing and web applications through location sensitive searching; 
 search index generation is performed automatically on published content and does not require separate steps of generating index and digital content for release by publisher plus allows search multiple search indices to be generated automatically; and 
 unique search indices may be generated as combined search index includes primary and secondary content of user plus multiple “release” levels of secondary content. 
 
     
     
         9 . The method according to  claim 1  wherein,
 the software system provides the release of electronic content in manner wherein primary and secondary electronic content wherein embodiments of the invention support baselining/filtering of the secondary content with rules established by license holder and hence governing sub-license filtering rules. 
 
     
     
         10 . The method according to  claim 1  wherein;
 the software system supports: 
 establishment of secondary content may be established as “pseudo-primary” where licensee may established secondary content to be presented by default thereby allowing enterprises to “customize” primary content without accessing and impacting rights to primary content; and 
 automated merging of secondary content to subsequent releases of primary content and ability to partition primary content allows automated merging of updated primary content with secondary content and allows removal of concepts such as annual editions/releases thereby allowing publishers to release updates regularly so that primary content becomes out of date rapidly. 
 
     
     
         11 . The method according to  claim 1  wherein;
 the software system supports: 
 issuance of partial licenses to predetermined portions of the primary content with appropriate licensing fee structures allowing licensing of one or more sections of primary content for a predetermined period of time; 
 content encryption and fingerprinting are performed “on-the-fly” and content may be partitioned to map to content structure; 
 partial and limited duration license allow “curators” to purchase additional short-term licenses for specific tasks/projects; 
 increased analytics supported through centralised server processing providing “librarians” with ability to manage library/budget based upon real user actions rather than perceived needs; and 
 linking between the licensees/sub-licensees as secondary content published into public community comes from authorised license holders which has importance in scientific, engineering, law, medicine and other fields whilst less important potentially to mainstream novel and general educational content. 
 
     
     
         12 . The method according to  claim 1  wherein,
 the software system supports: 
 peer-to-N-peer downloading of primary content as each content segment may be uniquely fingerprinted with identity of source as well as license associated with request for content; and 
 licenses associated with content and not hardware or number of hardware systems with immediate access thereby supporting enhance use in business environments. 
 
     
     
         13 . The method according to  claim 1  wherein,
 the software system supports: 
 automatic migration to display primary content hierarchy during user scrolling/swiping to ease migrate through content; and 
 automatic migration of scroll bar from linear to non-linear context according to user characteristic of scrolling, e.g. speed, distance, so that these increase scroll bar changes from page—sub-sections—sections—chapters etc.