Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Dan E Walther

Ling Tony Chen

Matthew Graham Dyor

Michael Todd Kramer

Sreenivas Gollapudi

Shyam Krishnamoorthy

Stelios Paparizos

John Christopher Shafer

Leszek Mazur

Joseph Futty

Jerry Paul Hook

Daniel M C Caiafa

Mohammed Moinuddin

Aaron M Colling

Anthony Y Kueh

An achievement system tracks users' offline activities and awards achievements to users for participation in particular offline activities. The achievements that are awarded for particular activities and/or to particular users may be sponsored by merchants, who may compensate an achievement system provider for the opportunity to sponsor the achievements. To award users achievements, the users' offline activities are tracked. When a user participates in an offline activity for which achievements are available, the user is awarded an achievement. The achievement may be stored in an achievement profile for the user. In some embodiments, achievements earned by users may be converted into other benefits and alternative awards.

Bringing achievements to an offline world

A mechanism that supports navigation in a manner that state information for certain web pages will be preserved through the completion of a task. While at that original return web page, the host computing system receives a request to perform a task in which the browser is to navigate to other web pages as part of completing the task. As the host computing system navigates the browser to each of these web pages, the host computing system stores the application state for each of the subsequent task-oriented web pages, along with a copy of the application state of the return web page. Once the task is complete, the host computing system uses the copy of the application state, rather than the original of the application state, to return the browser to the return web page.

Mechanism for supporting browser navigation while preserving important application return states

A providing computer system may receive a request, via a stateless protocol, to access a resource. An access control application may refer to administrative rules to set validation information associated with the request. Validation information may be in the form of electronic text that is stored in a location such as a cookie or state-table. Validation information may indicate the state of a session associated with a resource, such as whether a session is in a logged-in or logged-out state. When a request is received, validation information and authentication information may be utilized together to determine if access to a resource should be granted. When access to a resource is granted or denied, validation information may be updated to indicate that the state of the session has changed.

Maintaining authentication states for resources accessed in a stateless environment

Various techniques are described for managing license rights for a variety of digital content. One technique involves initiating a request for a specific content package. The content package includes a unique content package identifier that can be linked with a license offer that also has a unique identifier. A determination is made as to whether the specific content package is available locally, and if not, the specific content package is downloaded. A use license can be obtained for digital content contained within the specific content package. One or more use-license parameters can be determined based on the use license obtained for the digital content. Finally, use of the digital content is enabled in accord with the license parameters that were thus determined.

Dynamic digital content licensing

Growing community of inventors

Redmond, WA, United States of America

Dan E Walther