US Patent:
20050071273, Mar 31, 2005
Inventors:
William Vroman - Ingleside IL, US
Marko Pfaff - South Elgin IL, US
Christian Rigg - South Elgin IL, US
Ching Kung - Mount Prospect IL, US
Himanshu Shekhar - Palatine IL, US
Assignee:
UTSTARCOM, INC. - Alameda CA
International Classification:
G06F017/60
H04L009/00
H04K001/00
Abstract:
A multilevel hierarchical feature rights management system () provides an efficient way of allocating feature keys. Sub-agents () are provisioned or activated with application software having features. The sub-agents request permissions from feature rights management agents () to use these features. The feature rights management agents () receive feature keys over a network () from a feature rights server (). The feature rights management agents () then permit sub-agents () to use their provisioned features. In a further aspect of the invention the sub-agents () voluntarily release feature permissions rather than the server () or the agents () forcing the sub-agents () to revoke rights.
