Retail transactions involving digital content in a digital rights management (drm) system

Abstract

A retailer facilitates issuance of a digital license from a licensor to a customer for a corresponding piece of digital content. The retailer receives payment for the license from the customer, where the payment is to be shared with the licensor in a pre-determined manner. The retailer also receives customer-based information from the customer. The retailer then composes an actual license request including the obtained customer-based information, and including retailer-based information identifying the retailer to the licensor and acknowledging to the licensor that the retailer owes a portion of the received payment to the licensor. Thereafter, the retailer forwards the actual license request to the licensor. The licensor notes based on the retailer-based information in the actual license request that the retailer identified thereby owes the licensor at least a portion of the forwarded payment. If an individual sends a license request directly to the licensor and thus fails to forward payment for the license to a retailer, the actual license request as composed by the individual fails to include the retailer-based information. Accordingly, the licensor refuses to issue a license as requested based on the lack of retailer-based information.