SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR EFFICIENT DISTRIBUTION OF ELECTRONIC LICENSES AND ELECTRONIC CONTENT

摘要

A system and method for distributing electronic licenses to end-user devices (47) and utilizing the licenses to access protected software or decrypt electronic content distributed from a content creator (41) to an end-user. The end-user purchases a number of license tokens, which are distributed to the end-user device from a distributor (43). The tokens are utilized to access protected software in the end-user device such as decryption software for decrypting electronic content. The end-user selects content from the distributor's menu (46), which indicates a content identifier and a predefined number of tokens required for each content piece. The end-user then downloads the selected content in encrypted form, and the device utilizes the predefined number of tokens and the content identifier to generate a license key (52) and access decryption software in the end-user device, which is utilized to decrypt the downloaded content. Consumed tokens and content are reported to the distributor for revenue allocation in the distribution chain.