EP1695277A1

EP1695277A1 - System and methods for resolving license dependencies and for authenticating licenses

Info

Publication number: EP1695277A1
Application number: EP04812881A
Authority: EP
Inventors: Douglas Andrew Levin; Palle Martin Pedersen; Ashesh C. Shah
Original assignee: Black Duck Software Inc
Current assignee: Black Duck Software Inc
Priority date: 2003-12-04
Filing date: 2004-12-03
Publication date: 2006-08-30
Also published as: CA2547713A1; WO2005057457A2; IL176024A0

Description

SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR RESOLVING LICENSE DEPENDENCIES AND FOR AUTHENTICATING LICENSES

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS [0001] This application incorporates by reference, and claims priority to and the benefit of, United States patent application Serial No. 10/728,173, which was filed on December 4, 2003, and United States patent application Serial No. 10/728,174, which was filed on December 4, 2003.

TECHNICAL FIELD

[0002] The disclosed technology relates generally to aggregations of legally-protectable content and to license authentication. More particularly, the disclosed technology relates to resolving license attributes to facilitate the aggregation of legally-protectable content, and to a license authority that is capable of authenticating licenses and/or owners of such licenses for legally-protectable content based, at least in part, on license profiles and content identifiers associated with the legally-protectable content.

BACKGROUND

[0003] Individuals, groups, associations, organizations, and/or other types of entities interested in using, installing, distributing, selling, acquiring, compiling, aggregating, and/or otherwise intermingling and/or interacting with legally-protectable content such as music, art, video, text, multimedia, technology (e.g., software), technological/business know-how, contract rights, and/or any other type of content that is protectable under patent law, copyright law, trademark law, trade secret law, contract law, and/or under other legal bases need to consider the individual rights, restrictions, and/or prohibitions established by content owners for the use, distribution, modification, combination, interaction, and/or other manipulation of such content to avoid infringing upon the content owners' rights in that content.

[0004] For example, an information technology professional, such as a Chief Information Officer of a corporation, may want to ensure that a license whose terms govern manipulations of a software element being considered for installation and integration within a corporation's technological infrastructure is authentic and that such terms coincide with the infonnation technology professional's expectations so as to avoid infringing a content owner's rights in that software element and exposing the corporation to unexpected legal/financial liabilities. The risk of infringing a content owner's rights in a software element is increased when such elements are used in collaborative development enviromnents in which entities developing particular software elements share such elements with other entities, who may be potentially unrelated to the developing entities. Unlike traditional development environments in which a single entity controls the entire development of a software product and the ownership of, and rights in, the software product are well known and/or readily identifiable, the software products generated, at least in part, by aggregating software elements from multiple entities in a collaborative development environment may obfuscate the legal rights, obligations, restrictions, and/or prohibitions that pertain to an aggregated software product and thus increase the risk that the makers, distributors, installers, maintainers, users, and/or other entities associated with an aggregated software product may infringe upon the legal rights of one or more of the entities that developed the constituent software elements that were incoφorated into the aggregated software product.

[0005] Although content owners can mitigate the uncertainty in the legal rights associated with particular aggregated content by forming licenses that explicitly set forth the rights, obligations, restrictions, and/or prohibitions governing the use of aggregated content (e.g., the GNU General Public License, the Berkeley Software Distribution License, the Mozilla Public License, etc.), it becomes increasingly more difficult to do so as the number of collaborating content owners and the complexity of the aggregated content increase. Accordingly, entities participating in a collaborative environment have a continuing interest in developing technologies that can mitigate the risk of infringing another's rights in legally-protectable content incorporated into an aggregated content product and/or service. SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

[0006] In one aspect, the disclosed technology can mitigate the risk of infringing a content owner's rights in legally-protectable content by comparing restrictions established by that content owner for the use, distribution, modification, combination, interaction, and/or other manipulation of such content with comparable restrictions associated with another content owner's rights in other legally-protectable content to identify compatibilities and/or incompatibilities in such owners' rights, particularly where at least certain aspects of the legally- protectable content are combined to form an aggregated content. The restrictions associated with legally-protectable content are typically represented as license terms in one or more license agreements. In addition to default terms that generally affect the use, distribution, modification, combination, interaction, and/or other manipulation of legally-protectable content, the disclosed technology can also compare the use, distribution, modification, combination, interaction, and/or other manipulations pertaining to particular license terms, which may differ from the default terms, and thus provide a term-by-term comparison of license agreements to identify compatibilities and/or incompatibilities in an aggregated content of interest. Maintaining a history of the particular license terms and/or comparisons thereof facilitates the generation of one or more license alternatives that may be implemented for an aggregated content of interest, particularly when one or more previously-aggregated content elements are combined with one or more new content elements to form a higher level of aggregated content. [0007] In one embodiment, the disclosed technology can be used to develop systems and perform methods in which one or more known license attributes can be associated with a first license that contains restrictions pertaining to a first protectable content The first license can be identified by, for example, analyzing the first protectable content. Restriction values can be assigned to each of the license attributes associated with the first license to specify particular restrictions pertaining to the first protectable content. Similarly, one or more use values and/or interaction values can also be assigned to at least some of the license attributes associated with the first license.

[0008] In one embodiment, one or more of the assigned use values and/or assigned interaction values can be equivalent to default use and/or interaction values associated with the first license, respectively. Alternatively, one or more of the assigned use values and/or assigned interaction values can ovenide default use and/or interaction values associated with the first license, respectively. In one embodiment, the assigned restriction, use, and/or interaction values of at least some of the license attributes of the first license can ovenide at least some of the conesponding attribute values associated with the second license to form attribute values associated with a third protectable content. In one embodiment, the assigned restriction, use, and/or interaction values of at least some of the license attributes of the first license can coexist along with at least some of the conesponding attribute values associated with the second license, as at least some attribute values of the attributes associated with the third protectable content. The assigned use values can represent a permissible degree of distribution of at least some aspects of the first protectable content. The assigned interaction values can represent a permissible degree of manipulation of at least some aspects of the first protectable content. [0009] The restriction, use, and/or interaction values assigned to at least some of the license attributes of the first license can be compared with corresponding attribute values associated with a second license that contains restrictions pertaining to a second protectable content and such comparisons can serve as a basis for determining attributes associated with a third protectable content, where the third protectable content is based, at least in part, on a combination of at least some aspects of the first protectable content and the second protectable content. [0010] The first and/or second protectable content can conespond to one or more multimedia presentations, video segments, audio segments, textual representations, works of art, visual representations, technological know-how (e.g., manufacturing processes), business know-how (e.g., marketing information), contract rights, and/or software elements (e.g., open source software compliant with an open source definition, proprietary software not compliant with an open source definition, etc.). In one illustrative embodiment in which the first and/or second protectable content correspond to one or more software elements, the license attributes that may be associated with the first license can, for example, conespond to one or more software code formats, software naming conventions, software code annotations, wananties, reverse- engineering activities, patent litigation activities, standards bodies, violations of intellectual property rights, and/or textual descriptions of at least one aspect of the first license. A restriction value that may be assigned to one or more of the license attributes can, for example, conespond to a prohibition, a requirement, or a nullity (a neutral value that may be, for example, equivalent to the terms "none" or "not applicable") and can be set to, for example, true, false, required, don't care, forbidden, 1 (indicating a requirement), 0 (indicating a nullity), -1 (indicating a prohibition), and/or a textual value. A use value that may be assigned to one or more of the license attributes can, for example, conespond to an acquisition, a personal use, a research use, an organizational use, a limited distribution use, and/or an unlimited distribution use of one or more aspects of the first and/or second protectable content. Similarly, an interaction value that may be assigned to one or more of the license attributes can, for example, conespond to an original element, a modified element, a group of distinct elements, a group of interconnected elements, a group of elements capable of providing more than one function, an unrestricted manipulation of elements, and an umestricted ownership of elements of one or more aspects of the first and/or second protectable content.

[0011] In one embodiment and based on a comparison of restriction, use, and/or interaction values assigned to at least some license attributes of a first license with conesponding values assigned to license attributes of a second license, values for license attributes associated with a third license and/or a tliird protectable content can be identified. The attribute values of the third protectable content can serve as a basis for determining one or more license alternatives (which may be stored in a network-accessible location) for the third protectable content and one or more of such license alternatives can be selected based on an operational environment associated with the third protectable content. The license attributes of the third protectable content can include one or more source values that may identify attribute information associated with the first and/or second licenses, which may have affected corresponding values of the third protectable content. The license attributes and associated values of the first, second, and/or third license can be stored and used to determine license attributes and/or license attribute values associated with a fourth protectable content that may be based on a combination of at least some aspects of the first protectable content, second protectable content, and/or third protectable content. The attribute values of the fourth protectable content can serve as a basis for determining one or more license alternatives (which may be stored in a network-accessible location) for the fourth protectable content and one or more of such license alternatives can be selected based on an operational environment associated with the fourth protectable content. [0012] In one embodiment, event information, such as may be associated with an enor, a warning, and/or a conflict, detected during the comparison of attribute values can be stored in one or more event data structures. By way of non-limiting example, event information can include indicia pertaining to an event type, a frequency of occurrence of the event type, a related use value, a related interaction value, and/or an identifier associated with tlie first and/or second license. [0013] In one embodiment, the disclosed technology can be used to develop systems and perforrnmethods in which one or more first license attributes associated with a first protectable content and one or more second license attributes associated with a second protectable content can be identified. The first and/or second license attributes can be identified by, for example, analyzing the first and/or second protectable content, respectively. One or more restriction values can be assigned to each of the first and second license attributes to specify particular restrictions pertaining to the first protectable content and second protectable content, respectively. A use value, representing a pennissible degree of distribution of the first protectable content, and/or an interaction value, representing a permissible degree of manipulation of the first protectable content, can be assigned to at least some of the first license attributes. Similarly, a use value, representing a permissible degree of distribution of the second protectable content, and/or an interaction value, representing a pennissible degree of manipulation of the second protectable content, can be assigned to at least some of the second license attributes. A comparison between at least some of the assigned restriction, use, and/or interaction values of the first license attributes with conesponding restriction, use, and interaction values of the second license attributes can serve as a basis for determining license alternatives affecting an aggregated content that is based on a combination of at least some aspects of the first and second protectable content. [0014] The first and/or second protectable content can conespond to one or more multimedia presentations, video segments, audio segments, textual representations, works of art, visual representations, technological know-how (e.g., manufacturing processes), business know-how ^• (e.g., marketing information), contract rights, and/or software elements (e.g., open source software compliant with an open source definition, proprietary software not compliant with an open source definition, etc.). In one illustrative embodiment in which the first and/or second protectable content correspond to one or more software elements, the particular restrictions pertaining to the first and/or second protectable content can, for example, conespond to one or more software code formats, software naming conventions, software code annotations, wananties, reverse-engineering activities, patent litigation activities, standards bodies, violations of intellectual property rights, and/or textual descriptions of one or more aspects of the first and/or second protectable content. A restriction value that may be assigned to one or more of the first and/or second license attributes can, for example, conespond to a prohibition, a requirement, or a nullity (a neutral value that may be, for example, equivalent to the terms "none" or "not applicable"). One or more of the use values that may be assigned to one or more of the first and/or second license attributes can, for example, correspond to an acquisition, a personal use, a research use, an organizational use, a limited distribution use, and/or an unlimited distribution use of one or more aspects of the first and/or second protectable content. Similarly, one or more of the interaction values that may be assigned to one or more of the first and/or second license attributes can, for example, correspond to an original element, a modified element, a group of distinct elements, a group of interconnected elements, a group of elements capable of providing more than one function, an unrestricted manipulation of elements, and an unrestricted ownership of elements of one or more aspects of the first and/or second protectable content.

[0015] In one embodiment, one or more of the assigned use values and/or assigned interaction values of the first and/or second license attributes can be equivalent to default use values and/or default interaction values. Alternatively, one or more of the assigned use values and/or assigned interaction values of the first and/or second license attributes can ovenide default use values and/or default interaction values. In one embodiment, the assigned restriction, use, and/or interaction values of the first license attributes can ovenide at least some of the restriction, use, and/or interaction values assigned to the second license attributes to form attribute values associated with an aggregated content. In one embodiment, at least some of the assigned restriction, use, and/or interaction values of the first license attributes can coexist along with at least some of the restriction, use, and/or interaction values assigned to the second license attributes, as at least some attribute values associated with the aggregated content. [0016] In one embodiment, the disclosed technology can be used to develop systems and perform methods in which requests are received to identify a license of an aggregated content, which is based, at least in part, on a combination of constituent protectable-content elements. Licenses associated with a first one of the constituent protectable-content elements can be identified along with one or more licenses associated with each of the other constituent protectable-content elements. License attribute values associated with each of the licenses of the first constituent protectable-content element can be compared with corresponding license attribute values associated with each of the other constituent protectable-content elements and such comparison can serve, at least in part, as a basis for identifying license alternatives for the aggregated content. The requested license for the aggregated content can be selected from among the license alternatives based, at least in part, on an operational/deployment environment of the aggregated content.

[0017] In another aspect, the disclosed technology can mitigate the risk of infringing a content owner's rights in legally-protectable content by, for example, operating as a trusted, third-party license authority between content owners and content users/manipulators to ensure that a license governing at least some aspects of the protectable content is authentic and thus validly represents the restrictions imposed by one or more content owners pertaining to the use, distribution, modification, combination, interaction, and/or other manipulation of such content. [0018] In one embodiment, the disclosed technology can be used to develop systems and perform methods in which a license profile that is associated with a protectable content and that identifies attributes affecting at least one operation of the protectable content is accessed along with an identifier that represents the protectable content. The license profile and the protectable content identifier can serve as a basis for determining an authenticity of a license associated with the protectable content. In one illustrative embodiment, the license profile based on the license associated with the protectable content and/or the protectable content identifier (formed by, for example, a hash algorithm) can be formed by (or on behalf of) an owner of the protectable content and the license profile and protectable content identifier can be subsequently validated by an independent third-party entity that is otherwise not associated with the content owner. The protectable content can conespond to one or more multimedia presentations, video segments, audio segments, textual representations, works of art, visual representations, technological know- how (e.g., manufacturing processes), business know-how (e.g., marketing information), contract rights, and/or software elements (e.g., open source software compliant with an open source definition, proprietary software not compliant with an open source definition, etc.). [0019] In one illustrative embodiment in which the protectable content conesponds to one or more software elements, the license attributes identified by the license profile can, for example, conespond to license terms in the license associated with the protectable content, where such attributes conespond to one or more software code formats, software naming conventions, software code annotations, warranties, reverse-engineering activities, patent litigation activities, standards bodies, violations of intellectual property rights, and/or textual descriptions of at least one aspect of the protectable content. One or more restriction values that may be assigned to and/or otherwise be associated with one or more of the license attributes can, for example, conespond to a prohibition, a requirement, or a nullity (a neutral value that may be, for example, equivalent to the terms "none" or "not applicable") and can be set to, for example, true, false, required, don't care, forbidden, 1 (indicating a requirement), 0 (indicating a nullity), -1 (indicating a prohibition), and/or a textual value. One or more use values that may be assigned to and/or otherwise be associated with one or more of the license attributes can, for example, conespond to a permissible degree of distribution of the protectable content and can be set, for example, to values that reflect a particular acquisition, a personal use, a research use, an organizational use, a limited distribution use, and/or an unlimited distribution use of one or more aspects of the protectable content. One or more of the assigned use values can also be equivalent to or ovenide a default use associated with the license. Similarly, one or more interaction values that may be assigned to and/or otherwise be associated with one or more of the license attributes can, for example, conespond to a permissible degree of distribution of the protectable content and can be set, for example, to values that reflect an original element, a modified element, a group of distinct elements, a group of interconnected elements, a group of elements capable of providing more than one function, an unrestricted manipulation of elements, and an unrestricted ownership of elements of one or more aspects of the protectable content. As with use values, one or more of the assigned interaction values can also be equivalent to or override a default interaction associated with the license.

[0020] In one illustrative embodiment, an encrypted and/or digitally-signed request message that is transmitted by (or on behalf of) an owner of protectable content and which includes indicia pertaining to a protectable content identifier (e.g., the identifier itself, a type of algorithm used to form the identifier, etc.), a license profile, and/or the content owner can be received and such indicia can serve as a basis for computing an identifier associated with a license of the protectable content. The computed license identifier can be encrypted, digitally-signed, and transmitted to the content owner for subsequent coupling with the protectable content that is distributed to one or more users of the protectable content. One or more users of the protectable content can transmit a request message to authenticate a license associated with the protectable content and upon receipt of such request message the computed license identifier can be compared with a conesponding license identifier provided by one or more of such users. This comparison can serve as a basis for determining, providing, and/or otherwise making indicia pertaining to the authenticity of the license accessible to the requesting user. Such indicia can, for example, include the authenticated license itself, an authenticated profile of the license, information identifying an owner of the authenticated license, information identifying the owner of the protectable content, a measure of risk associated with the authenticity of the license, and/or an alphanumeric code enabling the operation of one or more aspects of the protectable content.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

[0021] The foregoing discussion will be understood more readily from the following detailed description of the disclosed technology when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which: FIG. 1 schematically illustrates an exemplary collaboration architecture employing aspects of the disclosed technology that can be used to identify one or more aggregated licenses for an aggregated content that is based on a combination of individually-licensed, protectable- content elements; FIG. 2 illustrates an exemplary methodology that may be performed by one or more software processes executing within the collaboration architecture of FIG. 1 to identify an aggregated license for an aggregated content of interest; FIGS. 3A and 3B schematically illustrate an exemplary licensing authority architecture employing aspects of the disclosed technology that can be used to authenticate one or more licenses associated with protectable-content elements; and FIG. 4 illustrates an exemplary methodology that may be performed by one or more software processes executing within the licensing authority architecture of FIGs. 3 A and 3B to authenticate licenses associated with protectable-content elements of interest. DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Definitions

[0022] For the purposes of this disclosure, the following terms are defined as follows: "aggregated content" (also refened to herein as an "aggregated-content element") refers to a collection and or combination of at least some aspects of two or more protectable-content elements that cooperate to perform one or more desired functions, where such protectable- content elements may be separately and/or individually licensed/owned, and those skilled in the art will recognize that aggregated-content elements can also be combined with other aggregated and/or non-aggregated content elements to form content elements that exhibit relatively higher levels of aggregation; "aggregated license" refers to a license that sets forth restrictions for an aggregated- content element; "content" (also referred to herein as "protectable content," "protectable-content element," or "constituent protectable-content element") refers, separately or in any combination, to one or more multimedia presentations, video segments, audio segments, textual representations, works of art, visual representations, technological know-how (e.g., manufacturing processes), business know-how (e.g., marketing information), contract rights, software elements (e.g., open source software compliant with an open source definition, proprietary software not compliant with an open source definition, etc.), and/or any other type of matter/representation that may be legally- protectable under patent law, copyright law, trademark law, trade secret law, contract law, and/or under other legal bases; "data structure" refers to a database table, a linked list, and/or any other type of data format or configuration that enables a data set to be referenced; "digital data processing device" refers to a personal computer, computer workstation, laptop computer, server computer, mainframe computer, handheld device (e.g., personal digital assistant, Pocket PC, cellular telephone, etc.), information appliance, or any other type of generic or special-purpose processor-controlled device that is capable of receiving, processing, and/or transmitting digital data; "event" refers to one or more enors, warnings, conflicts, and/or other types of occunences that may occur when evaluating, aggregating, and/or otherwise processing license attributes; "event information" refers to information that may be stored in corresponding event data structures and may include, for example, an event type (e.g., copyright detection, author detection, license attribute conflict, etc.), an event counter that specifies a frequency of occunence for a particular event, indicia pertaining to a use and/or interaction value associated with an event, and/or indicia (e.g., a name/identifier, a value, a type, and/or a directory path associated with one or more aggregated-content elements and/or protectable-content elements) pertaining to a source of information associated with an event; "license" refers to a collection of clauses (e.g., license terms) that set forth restrictions (e.g., requirements, obligations, grants, prohibitions, limitations, etc.) that may affect a use (e.g., distribution), interaction (e.g., modification, combination), and/or other manipulation of protectable content; "license alternatives" refers to one or more licenses that may be suitable for a particular operational/deployment environment of an aggregated-content element; "license attributes" refers to representations of license restrictions that may be processed by software processes executing on one or more digital data processing devices, and can exhibit one or more values that may facilitate an attribute-by-attribute analysis of two or more protectable-content elements that form at least part of an aggregated content, such as, for example, one or more restriction values (which can specify an applicability of one or more license attributes to a content element by, for example, specifying if such attributes are required, prohibited, not applicable, true, false, or the like), use values (which can represent a permissible degree of distribution associated with one or more license attributes), and/or interaction values (which can represent a permissible degree of manipulation associated with one or more license attributes); "license authority" refers to one or more software processes (e.g., software processes that handle requests, analyze protectable content, evaluate licenses, aggregate licenses, provide substantially unique identifiers of the licenses and protectable content, and/or assess risk) that operate on protectable content, licenses, license profiles, and/or other types of data and parameters so as to serve as a trusted, third-party entity between owners and users/manipulators of protectable content that can authenticate the validity of licenses, identify content owners, and/or determine risk measures that may be used to insure against potential legal/financial liability that may be incurred if a content owner's rights in a particular protectable content are infringed by an unwitting content user/manipulator; "license profile" refers to a collection of license attributes associated with a particular protectable content and/or a particular license; "object code" refers to a compiled version of source code that is understood by a processor of a digital data processing device, but which is difficult to understand and/or manipulate by a human; "processor" refers to logic circuitry that responds to and processes instructions that drive digital data processing devices and can include, without limitation, a central processing unit, an arithmetic logic unit, an application specific integrated circuit, a task engine, and/or any combinations, anangements, or multiples thereof; "software code" refers to source code and/or object code; "software process" refers to a set of executable instructions, operations, variables, parameters, data, data structures, software drivers, plug-ins, and/or any other types of elements that are needed to form an execution environment sufficient to perform the desired functionality of a process, and those skilled in the art will recognize that the functionality described for a particular software process can be incorporated into one or more other processes and that the software processes themselves can be otherwise combined, separated, and/or organized without adversely affecting the operation of the disclosed technology and thus are intended merely for illustrative purposes; "source code" refers to programming statements generated by and/or readily identifiable by a software programmer; and "substantially" refers to an indication of a precise relationship, condition, anangement, orientation, and/or other characteristic as well as deviations thereof, as understood by one of ordinary skill in the art, to the extent that such deviations do not materially affect the disclosed methods and systems.

Overview

[0023] Unless otherwise specified, the illustrated embodiments can be understood as providing exemplary features of varying detail of certain embodiments, and therefore, unless otherwise specified, features, components, processes, elements, data, attributes, attribute values, and/or aspects of the illustrations can be otherwise combined, interconnected, sequenced, separated^ interchanged, relocated/repositioned, and/or rearranged without departing from the disclosed systems or methods. Additionally, the shapes, sizes, and orientations of elements are also exemplary and, unless otherwise specified, can be altered without affecting the disclosed technology.

[0024] By way of non-limiting example and with reference to an embodiment in which protectable content refers to software elements, a non-exclusive list of license attributes that may be associated with such software elements can include one or more software code formats (e.g., requirement for providing access to source code if executable code is distributed, requirement to make newly-added software code available in a source code format, requirement to distribute newly-added source code under terms of a particular license, etc.), software naming conventions (e.g., requirement that non-original software files be renamed to avoid conflict with names of original software files), software code annotations (e.g., requirement that a notification be added to modified executable and/or source code), warranties (e.g., disclaimer of wananties and liability for original source code), fees (e.g., allowing warranty fees, distribution/media cost- recovery fees, and/or software program fees associated with one or more software elements, etc.), reverse-engineering activities (e.g., requirement that distributed and/or newly-added software code be capable of reverse-engineering), patent litigation activities (e.g., contingency in which initiation of a patent litigation terminates a license), standards bodies (e.g., requirement that newly-added software code conform to applicable standards specified by a particular standards body), violations of intellectual property rights (e.g., requirement that contributors of new software code wanant that such new code is free of intellectual property violations and that all applicable rights have been properly secured, prohibition against using the name and trademarks associated with an original software element and/or original author in promoting modified software code, etc.), and/or textual descriptions of conesponding licenses (e.g., requirement to include the actual text of an original license when distributing conesponding software code, requirement to include explanatory license text for software modifications, requirement to display notifications during execution of software code, requirement to provide license text regarding a distribution term and/or attribution procedures, etc.). As described above, restriction values can specify an applicability of one or more such license attributes to a software element by, for example, specifying if such attributes are required, prohibited, not applicable, true, false, etc. [0025] Continuing with the exemplary software element embodiment, use values assigned to one or more license attributes can, for example, conespond to an acquisition, a personal use, a research and development use, an organizational use (e.g., a deployment of software code within an organization in a form that may exceed personal use and/or research and development use), a limited distribution use (e.g., a deployment of software code without wide distribution), and/or an unlimited distribution use (e.g., a distribution of software code to unrelated entities) of at least one aspect of a software element. Similarly, interaction values assigned to one or more license attributes can, for example, conespond to an original software element (e.g., unmodified source code), a modified software element (e.g., original source code files that have been altered by the addition of new code or the deletion of some original code), a group of distinct software elements (e.g., a collection of original and added source code files forming a software module), a group of interconnected software elements (e.g., a collection of original and/or added source code and object code files forming a library, where such files are meant to be linked with other software elements), a group of software elements capable of providing one or more functions (e.g., software code capable of being compiled into an executable software application program, software code capable of providing separate and interoperable software application programs, etc.), an unrestricted manipulation of software elements, and/or an unrestricted ownership of software elements.

[0026] Collaborative development environments in which individuals, organizations, and/or other entities engage in joint intellectual, artistic, and/or other expressive efforts to advance/expedite development in an area of interest may necessitate interactions with protectable content that may be proprietary to one or more of such entities. Restrictions affecting a use (e.g., distribution), interaction (e.g., modification or combination), and/or other manipulation of protectable content can be stipulated by an owner of such content in license terms set forth, for example, in one or more license agreements that may enable interested parties to use and/or interact with the content in a manner that facilitates collaboration, while concunently avoiding infringement of the content owner's rights in such protectable content. The likelihood of infringing a content owner's rights in protectable content is particularly acute in situations in which two or more protectable-content elements are combined and/or otherwise manipulated to form an aggregated content, which may be subject to the restrictions of its constituent protectable-content elements as may be set forth as terms in one or more licenses.

License Dependency Resolution

[0027] In brief overview of a first aspect of the invention, and with reference to the illustrative embodiment shown in FIG. 1, a collaboration architecture 100 employing aspects of the disclosed technology can be used to select/identify an aggregated license 102, from perhaps a multitude of aggregated license alternatives 104, that sets forth restrictions affecting one or more aggregated-content elements 106, where such restrictions are based, at least in part, on restrictions contained within licenses 108 associated with protectable content 110 that forms such aggregated content 106. The restrictions contained within such constituent protectable- content licenses 108 can be represented as license attributes 112 that are drawn from a set of known/available license attributes 114 and such license attributes 112 can be assigned one or more restriction values 116, use values 118, and/or interaction values 120, which facilitate a comparative attribute-by-attribute analysis of the constituent protectable-content licenses 108 and thus enables the identification of aggregated license attributes 122 and associated values that form the basis for one or more aggregated license alternatives 104. [0028] Although one or more of the exemplary embodiments provided herein describe applications of at least some aspects of the disclosed technology to a pair of licenses 108', 108" and/or a pair of protectable content elements 110', 110", those skilled in the art will recognize that the disclosed technology can be applied to substantially any number of licenses, license combinations, protectable content elements, and/or protectable content element combinations/aggregations and, thus, such exemplary embodiments are merely illustrative and are not intended to be limiting in any respect. Further, and although one or more of the exemplary embodiments provided herein describe comparative attribute-by-attribute analyses of license attributes 112 in which a particular attribute/attribute value of a first license 108' is compared with a conesponding attribute/attribute value of a second license 108", those skilled in the art will recognize that the disclosed technology can be applied to a wide variety of attribute/attribute value analyses such as, for example, when two or more attributes/attribute values of a first license 108' are compared with each other and/or with one or more attributes/attribute values of one or more other licenses to identify aggregated license attributes 122 and associated values that form a basis for one or more aggregated license profiles 128 and/or aggregated license alternatives 104 and, thus, such exemplary embodiments are merely illustrative and are not intended to be limiting in any respect. By way of non-limiting example and with reference to an embodiment in which protectable content refers to software elements, two distinct attributes and their associated attribute values of a first exemplary license may require that access to original (unmodified) source code and access to added source code (e.g., source code that is added to the original source code) be made available to a user if conesponding executable code is distributed to the user, but these two attributes and associated attribute values may conflict with, for example, a single attribute/attribute value of a second exemplary license that may prohibit distribution of source code. The conesponding attributes and associated attribute values of the resulting aggregated license profile, in this non-limiting example, may therefore include indicia representative of such distribution incompatibilities. [0029] In more detail and with reference now also to an illustrative operation as shown in FIG. 2, an administrator and/or other entity (not shown) authorized to configure a collaboration architecture 100 employing at least some aspects of the disclosed technology can identify known types of license attributes 114 that may be associated with one or more protectable-content elements 110 and can make such known license attributes 114 available in one or more repositories 124 (e.g., databases) to support subsequent attribute-processing activities that may involve the collaboration architecture 100 (202). The known license attributes 114 can, for example, represent types of license restrictions that may occur in licenses that affect transactions in one or more industries (e.g., music industry, software industry, etc.) and/or operational environments. [0030] Once the repository 124 of the collaboration architecture 100 is populated with known license attributes 114, a request handling software process 126 can receive a request to, for example, identify one or more license alternatives 104 and/or aggregated license attributes 122 associated with an aggregated content of interest 106 (204). The aggregated content of interest 106 can, for example, correspond to aggregated content that already exists, aggregated content that is cunently under development, and/or aggregated content that is being considered for development. As will be recognized by those skilled in the art, a request can be provided to the request handling software process 126 via an electronic message (e.g., electronic mail message), an electronic document (e.g., an electronic file), an input data stream (e.g., keyboard and/or mouse actions), a web page, and/or in any other manner which enables the request handling software process 126 to reliably receive and identify information pertaining to an aggregated content of interest 106 (e.g., name and/or other indicia of the aggregated content 106, name and/or other indicia of the constituent protectable-content elements 110 that form such aggregated content 106, license information associated with the aggregated content 106 and/or constituent protectable content 110, etc.). [0031] In response to receiving a request, the request handling software process 126 can search one or more repositories 124 to ascertain whether one or more license profiles 128 of the aggregated content 106 are stored therein (206). If an aggregated license profile 128 exists, the request handling software process 126 can provide the requesting entity with such license profile 128 and/or with one or more conesponding aggregated license alternatives 104, from which a selected aggregated license 102 maybe selected (208). If an aggregated license profile 128 is not located within one or more of the repositories 124, the request handling software process 126 can identify constituent protectable-content elements 110 (which may also be stored in one or more of the repositories 124) that form the aggregated content of interest 106 from information contained within the received request and/or by instructing a content analysis software process 132 to analyze the aggregated content of interest 106 (which may also be stored in one or more of the repositories 124) to identify its constituent protectable-content elements 110 by, for example, searching for particular segments of software code, embedded copyright information, embedded license information, embedded ownership information, embedded version information, and/or any other type of indicia useful in identifying the constituent protectable- content elements 110 (210). Similarly, licenses 108 associated with the constituent protectable content 110 can be identified from information contained within the received request and/or from information embedded in the constituent protectable content 110 and discovered by the content analysis software process 132. [0032] In response to identifying the licenses 108 (which may also be stored in one or more repositories 124) associated with the constituent protectable-content elements 110, the request handling software process 126 can make a determination whether one or more license profiles 130 representing such licenses 108 exist by, for example, searching one or more repositories 124 for such profile information (212). This determination can affect whether a license evaluation software process 134 needs to initially form one or more new license profiles 130 for the licenses 108 of the constituent protectable-content elements 110 (in the case where license profiles 130 do not exist) prior to analyzing the attribute values of such protectable content 110 to identify compatibilities and/or incompatibilities in their conesponding licenses 108. [0033] For example, if license profiles 130 for the licenses 108 of constituent protectable- content elements 110 do not yet exist, the request handling software process 126 can instruct a license evaluation software process 134 to evaluate the licenses 108 to determine relevant subsets of the known license attributes 114 that may be assigned/associated to represent such licenses 108 (214). The license evaluation software process 134 can identify relevant subsets of the known license attributes 114 by, for example, mapping restrictions contained within license terms in the licenses 108 to particular known license attributes, evaluating information contained within the request received by the request handling software process 126 that pertains to the licenses 108 and/or associated license restrictions, and/or based on additional information provided by the requesting entity and/or administrator/authorized user of the collaboration architecture 100. Once the relevant subsets of the known license attributes 114 have been identified and assigned to represent the licenses 108 of the constituent protectable-content elements 110, the license evaluation software process 134 can further analyze the licenses 108 to assign one or more restriction values 116 (specifying an applicability of an associated attribute), use values 118 (specifying a permissible degree of distribution that may cause an associated attribute to become applicable), interaction values 120 (specifying a permissible degree of manipulation that may be associated with a particular attribute), and/or other values (e.g., license text excerpts and/or other license identifying information associated with an attribute) to one or more of the assigned attributes 112 and these attributes and attribute values can be stored in one or more license profiles 130 in a repository 124, which may facilitate future processing activity within the collaboration architecture 100 if and/or when such licenses 108 are encountered again (216). [0034] Although the assigned attributes 112 in the FIG. 1 embodiment indicate that conesponding restriction, use, and interaction values 116-120 are assigned to each of the attributes 112, those skilled in the art will recognize that one or more of such values 116-120, separately or in any combination, need not be assigned to any particular attribute 112 and that the illustrated embodiment is merely exemplary of one possible embodiment and is not intended to be limiting in any respect. Further, the licenses 108 of one or more constituent protectable content elements 110 can include license terms that specify default distribution and/or manipulation restrictions that may be represented as common use and/or interaction values for at least some of the attributes 112 of conesponding license profiles 130, although the disclosed technology can also accommodate particular use and/or interaction values that may override such common/default values as required. In one illustrative embodiment, default restrictions in license terms can be represented as use, interaction, and/or other types of values that can be shared among license attributes 112 by, for example, assigning such default values to conesponding attributes (that do not have any oveniding values that supersede the default values), assigning pointers and/or other indicia to the conesponding attributes so that default values can be referenced and taken into account during subsequent processing activities, and/or via any other method or mechanism which provides access to such default values during processing activities performed by a license aggregation software process 136, whose functionality is further described below. [0035] Upon completion of the license profiles 130 and/or if such license profiles 130 previously existed, a license aggregation software process 136 can analyze the attribute values 116-120 of one or more attributes 112 associated with the constituent protectable-content elements 110 forming at least part of an aggregated content 106 in view of an intended operational/deployment environment and/or other operational parameters associated with the aggregated content 106 to determine specific attribute and/or attribute value compatibilities and/or incompatibilities between the licenses 108 of such constituent protectable-content elements 110 (218). If an incompatibility and/or other type of error, warning, and/or information is detected during this analysis (and which is not already identified as an attribute value) (220), the license aggregation software process 136 can generate event data such as, for example, an event type 138, a frequency of occurrence 140 of an event, indicia of use and/or interaction values associated with an event 142, and/or other indicia that may pertain to a source of infonnation for the event and such event data can be stored in one or more event data structures 146, which may be stored as part of one or more license profiles 128, 130 and/or as separate data structures within one or more repositories 124 (222). The event data structures 146 can be useful in resolving incompatibilities between licenses 108 that may be specific to such licenses 108 and thus may not have been otherwise accounted for in values 116-120 assigned to conesponding license attributes 112. For example, event data 138-144 stored within one or more event data structures 146 can be communicated to an entity that submitted a conesponding request that was received by the request handling software process 126 and/or to other interested entities (e.g., one or more content owners or entities affiliated with such content owners that are associated with the protectable content 110 and/or aggregated content 106) and such entities can seek waivers, new license terms, a redesign of the aggregated content 106, a modification of the operational/deployment environment of the aggregated content 106, new design alternatives, and/or other types of conective action that can mitigate the risk of infringing a content owner's rights in the protectable content 110 and/or aggregated content 106 associated with the detected incompatibilities. In addition to detecting and resolving incompatibilities, event data structures 146 can also include warnings and/or other information that may be addressed in a more subtle manner than that discussed above, such as by, for example, identifying text (e.g., notices describing operational boundaries associated with the operational/deployment environment of the aggregated content 106) that needs to be inserted into one or more aggregated license alternatives 104 associated with the aggregated content 106.

[0036] In more detail and with respect to one illustrative embodiment, a license aggregation software process 136 can compare one or more attribute values 116'- 120,' 116"- 120" associated with one or more license attributes 112' of a first license 108' with one or more conesponding attribute values 116"'-120'", 116^,V-120^1V associated with one or more license attributes 112" of a second license 108" to identify aggregated license attributes 122 associated with an aggregated content of interest 106. Aggregated license attributes 122 can be stored as one or more aggregated license profiles 128 in one or more repositories 124, which may facilitate future processing activity within the collaboration architecture 100 if/when such aggregated license profiles 128 are needed again (224). Attributes and attribute values of the first license 108' can be compared with conesponding attributes and attribute values of the second license 108" in an attribute-by-attribute and/or attribute value-by-attribute value manner to ensure that any compatibilities and/or incompatibilities that may be associated with the combination of protectable content elements 110', 110" to form an aggregated content 106, targeted for deployment/operation in a particular manner/environment, are identified at a level of granularity sufficient to reliably detect potential/actual infringement risks associated with particular aspects of the aggregated content 106. Similarly, the attribute-by-attribute and/or attribute value-by- attribute value comparison can serve as a basis for determining whether particular aspects of the aggregated content 106 are governed by the attributes/license terms of the first license 108', the attributes/license terms of the second license 108", and/or any combinations (e.g., one or more of the attributes and/or attribute values of the first license 108' may govern an aspect of the aggregated content 106, while one or more of the attributes and/or attribute values of the second license 108" may govern a different aspect of the aggregated content 106) and/or hybrids thereof (e.g., attribute values associated with an attribute of the first license 108' and attribute values associated with an attribute of the second license 108" may be assigned to a common attribute of the aggregated content 106 and thus coexist as further discussed below, one or more attribute values associated with an attribute of the first license 108' may override attribute values associated with an attribute of the second license 108" in some situations or be overridden thereby in other situations, etc.). Those skilled in the art will recognize that this type of analysis can be performed for any number of attributes, attribute values, and/or licenses and that the disclosed embodiments are merely illustrative and are not intended to be limiting in any respect. [0037] In one embodiment, the restriction, use, and/or interaction values 116'- 120' assigned to an attribute 112' of a first license 108' may coexist with one or more of the restriction, use, and/or interaction values 116"'-120'" assigned to an attribute 112" of a second license 108" if such values do not result in a dominant or subservient relationship that would necessitate a modification in the attribute values of a conesponding aggregated license attribute 122 (see, for example, the attribute values assigned to Aggregated License Attribute 1 in FIG. 1). For example, one or more coexisting values and/or value sets 116'-120' and 116"'-120'" for a first attribute of an aggregated content 106 may reflect optional occurrences within an operational/deployment environment, such as when, for example, license fees are forbidden when the aggregated content 106 is used for research and development purposes, but fees are required when the aggregated content 106 is widely distributed. In this manner, the disclosed technology can be used to generate one or more aggregated license alternatives 104, based on attributes whose values may accommodate a diverse spectrum of occurrences within one or more operational/deployment environments. Those skilled in the art will recognize that multiple values and/or value sets can be assigned to a wide variety of different attribute types and that the disclosed examples and embodiments are merely illustrative and are not intended to be limiting in any respect.

[0038] In one embodiment, one or more restriction, use, and/or interaction values 116"- 120" assigned to an attribute 112' of a first license 108' may dominate or be subservient to one or more restriction, use, and/or interaction values 116^ιy-120^lv assigned to an attribute 112" of a second license 108", which may necessitate that attribute values of a conesponding aggregated license attribute (see, for example, Aggregated License Attribute 2 in FIG. 1) reflect a combination of attribute values associated with the conesponding attributes of the first and second license 108', 108" (which may occur if there is partial domination or subservience) or reflect one set of attribute values in the case where there is complete domination or subservience. For example, a restriction value of an attribute associated with a first license may be more restrictive (e.g., recite a requirement or prohibition of the associated attribute) than a restriction value of an attribute associated with a second license (e.g., when a neutral/don't care value is specified), in which case the restriction value of the first license governs the combination of such values and is thus represented as a restriction value to a conesponding attribute of an aggregated content. Similarly, use and/or interaction values of an attribute associated with a first license may also be more or less restrictive than use and/or interaction values of an attribute associated with a second license and the selection of the controlling values for the conesponding attribute of the aggregated content can be based, at least partly, on the relative restrictiveness of such values. In this manner, the disclosed technology can be used to generate one or more aggregated license alternatives 104 based on attributes whose values reflect the more restrictive aspects of constituent protectable content licenses and which thus mitigate the risk of infringing one or more of such licenses in a particular operational/deployment environment. [0039] In one illustrative embodiment, an aggregated license profile 128 and/or one or more other data structures stored within a repository 124 of the collaboration architecture 100 can include content-descriptive information (not shown) that characterizes one or more aspects of the aggregated content 106 itself, rather than or in addition to the aggregated license attributes 122 and associated attribute values that pertain to license terms of one or more aggregated license alternatives 104. By way of non-limiting example and with respect to an exemplary embodiment in which an aggregated content 106 refers to an aggregation of one or more software elements, content-descriptive information can conespond to manipulations/interactions of at least some aspects of constituent protectable content elements 110 that form such aggregated content 106 and can, for example, specify whether the aggregated content 106 includes a software library formed from a combination of source code from the constituent protectable content elements 110, whether the aggregated content 106 includes a software application formed from a combination of software libraries from the constituent protectable content elements 110, and/or the like.

[0040] In one illustrative embodiment, an aggregated license profile 128 and/or one or more other data structures stored within a repository 124 of the collaboration architecture 100 can include profile-ovenide infonnation (not shown) that can be used to, for example, add/modify/delete one or more attributes 112 and/or associated attribute values in a license profile 130 of a constituent protectable content element 110 that forms an aggregated content of interest 106, so as to accommodate special situations where, for example, a user of the aggregated content 106 obtains a waiver and/or otherwise negotiates with an authorized owner of the constituent protectable element 110 to obtain license terms that differ from those originally expressed in a license 108 of the constituent protectable content 110 and which enable the user to interact with the aggregated content 106 in a desired manner. Accordingly, the profile-override information can be used by a license evaluation software process 134 and/or license aggregation software process 136 to custom-design license profiles 130 and aggregated license profiles 128 for particular users and/or particular operational/deployment environments. By way of non- limiting example and with reference to an embodiment in which protectable content 110 refers to one or more software elements, a potential distributor of an aggregated software product 106 who wants to distribute such product 106, but is prevented from doing so because of distribution incompatibilities in the license terms of its constituent software elements 110, can obtain authorization from an authorized content owner to modify particular license terms that cause such incompatibilities so that the aggregated software product 106 can be distributed as desired. The authorization obtained from the content owner can be represented as profile-override information that can ovenide (e.g., add, modify, delete) one or more attributes/attribute values of a license profile 130 that governs one or more of such constituent software elements 110 and when such attributes and attribute values are combined, by a license aggregation software process 136, with conesponding attributes and attribute values of other constituent license profiles 130, the resulting aggregated license profile 128 and/or aggregated license alternatives can reflect such ovenidden attributes/attribute values that enable the distributor of the aggregated software product 106 to distribute such aggregated software product 106 as authorized/desired. Those skilled in the art will recognize that profile-override information is one example of various types of data/information that can be stored within an aggregated license profile 128 and/or other data structure in the repository 124 of tlie collaboration architecture to describe and/or affect how a particular aggregated license profile 128 was formed. [0041] Additional values that may be assigned to aggregated license attributes 122 and/or stored in source data structures (not shown) may include source information/values 148-152 (e.g., indicia pertaining to related license clauses/attributes, storage location within a repository 124, etc.), license text excerpts 154 (that may be used to explain particular, aggregated license attributes 122), and/or any other type of information that may be useful in characterizing/profiling an aggregated content of interest 106. Source information and associated values 148-152 assigned to aggregated license attributes 122 can provide information that is useful in identifying and/or locating the license attributes 112 and/or attribute values 116, 120 associated with constituent protectable content 110 that participated in the formation and/or assignment of the aggregated license attributes 122 and/or values. A source value 148 assigned to a particular aggregated license attribute 122 and/or stored in a source data structure can, for example, identify a file name, a license name/identifier, a directory path of a license and/or license attribute, a particular location within a file, a list of associated protectable content 110, a list of associated aggregated content 106, and/or any other type of information that is useful in tracking and reporting issues and/or other information pertaining to processing activity performed by the license aggregation software process 136 during its formation of the aggregated license attributes. In one embodiment, the source information 148-152 can be used in concert with event data 138-144 stored in the event data structures 146 to identify and locate those elements of the collaboration architecture 100 that were processed and that contributed to particular event types, thereby facilitating troubleshooting and/or other remedial activities. Similarly text, such as license text excerpts 154 from one or more licenses 108, may be included/assigned to one or more aggregated license attributes 122 and may include, for example, modification instructions, distribution information, author attribution information, operational notices (e.g., software runtime notices), publishing infonnation, transferability information, devices/platforms that may be used together with the aggregated content, governing jurisdictions, and/or any other type of information that is useful in forming one or more aggregated license alternatives, resolving incompatibilities, and/or providing information that mitigates a likelihood of infringement. In this manner, license text excerpts 154 and/or other textual information can facilitate the formation of aggregated license alternatives (and may be included entirely or partly in such licenses) and/or facilitate the resolution of incompatibilities. [0042] Those skilled in the art will recognize that more than one aggregated license profile 128 may exist for a particular aggregated content 106, particularly where one or more of its constituent protectable-content elements 110 can be governed by more than one license 108. In such situations, multiple aggregated license profiles 128 can be formed to represent the various permutations of licenses and associated license attributes. Particular aggregated license profiles 128 that are not compatible with an operational environment of the conesponding aggregated content of interest 106 can be discarded. Otherwise one or more aggregated license profiles 128 that are viable relative to the operational environment of the aggregated content 106 can be used by the license aggregation software process 136 to generate, identify, and/or store one or more aggregated license alternatives 104 for the aggregated content 106 (226). In one embodiment, the license aggregation software process 136 can generate the license alternatives 104 by, for example, mapping the aggregated license attributes 122 and associated attribute values to license clause templates that can be updated to represent the desired license alternatives. In one embodiment, the request handling software process 126 can provide the aggregated content profile 128 for an aggregated content of interest 106 to a requesting entity that can subsequently use the profile information to generate the legal language forming the aggregated license alternatives 104 and the resulting license alternatives can be subsequently stored in one or more repositories. [0043] In more detail and with respect to one illustrative embodiment, the operation, deployment, and/or manipulation of a particular protectable content element 110 can be governed by one of several different license alternatives. In order to support the combination of at least some aspects of this protectable content 110 with that of other protectable content, which may also be governed by more than one license, to form an aggregated content 106, the disclosed technology can process the various permutations in license alternatives by, for example, performing an attribute-by-attribute and/or attribute value-by-attribute value comparison for the attributes in these sets of license alternatives. For example, if a first protectable content has two license alternatives (e.g., LI and L2) and a second protectable content has three license alternatives (e.g., L3, L4, and L5), the disclosed technology can process permutations of such licenses that may include combinations involving license pairs LIL3, LIL4, LIL5, L2L3, L2L4, and L2L5. Those skilled in the art will recognize that the disclosed technology can be applied to any number of licenses, protectable content elements, and/or other license combinations that may differ from license pairs (e.g., if three or more protectable content elements are being aggregated, ' then the license combinations may, but need not, involve three or more licenses per combination) and that the disclosed embodiments are merely exemplary. As previously discussed, license profiles 130 for one or more of licenses L1-L5 that provide license attribute information, including restriction, use, and/or interaction values for such attributes, may already exist in a repository 124 and/or can be generated using the license evaluation software process 134. [0044] Upon identifying/generating the license profiles 130 for licenses L1-L5, the license aggregation software process 136 can compare, sequentially or in parallel, the attribute values of attributes associated with LI with conesponding attribute values of attributes associated with L3 for license combination L1L3 and for each of the other combination pairs. As previously described, processing information associated with the license evaluation software process 134 and/or license aggregation software process 136 can be tracked and stored within one or more repositories and can include, for example, license profiles 130, event data 138-144 in one or more event data structures 146, aggregated license attributes and values (e.g., dominant values, subservient values, coexisting values, source values, license text excerpts, etc.). The processed and stored information can be used to identify aggregated license alternatives that are based on the various license combinations and can facilitate the selection of a prefened aggregated license for a particular operational/deployment environment. As the number of license aggregation operations performed by the disclosed technology increases, the performance of the collaboration architecture 100 may also increase since the data stored in the repositories 124 may already include the license profiles 130, aggregated license profiles 128, and/or other processing data that can facilitate the generation, evaluation, and/or selection of aggregated license alternatives.

[0045] The various software processes 126, 132, 134, 136, processing operations, repositories 124, content 106, 110, known license attributes 114, assigned attributes 112, attribute values 116-120, 148-152, license profiles 128, 130, entity types, event data structures 146 and associated event data 138-144, and/or other elements of the collaboration architecture 100 can operate on and/or otherwise be associated with one or more digital data processing devices (not shown) that may be interconnected by a network (not shown). [0046] The instructions executed by a processor represent, at a low level, a sequence of "0's" and "Fs" that describe one or more physical operations of a digital data processing device. These instructions can be pre-loaded into a programmable memory (e.g., EEPROM) that is accessible to the processor and/or can be dynamically loaded into/from one or more volatile (e.g., RAM, cache, etc.) and/or non-volatile (e.g., hard drive, etc.) memory elements communicatively coupled to the processor. The instructions can, for example, conespond to the initialization of hardware within a digital data processing device, an operating system that enables the hardware elements to communicate under software control and enables other computer programs to communicate, and/or software application programs/software processes that are designed to perform particular functions for an entity or other computer programs, such as functions relating to processing license registration requests and/or license authentication requests.

[0047] A local user can interact with a digital data processing device by, for example, viewing a command line, graphical, and/or other user interface and entering commands via an input device, such as a mouse, keyboard, touch sensitive screen, track ball, keypad, etc. The user interface can be generated by a graphics subsystem of a digital data processing device, which renders the interface into an on or off-screen surface (e.g., in a video memory and/or on a display screen). Inputs from the user can be received via an input/output subsystem and routed to a processor via an internal bus (e.g., system bus) for execution under the control of the operating system. [0048] Similarly, a remote user can interact with a digital data processing device over a data communications network. The inputs from the remote user can be received and processed in whole or in part by a remote digital data processing device collocated with the remote user. Alternatively or in combination, the inputs can be transmitted back to and processed by the local digital data processing device or to another digital data processing device via one or more networks using, for example, thin client technology. The user interface of the local digital data processing device can also be reproduced, in whole or in part, at the remote digital data processing device collocated with the remote user by transmitting graphics information to the remote device and instructing the graphics subsystem of the remote device to render and display at least part of the interface to the remote user. Network communications between two or more digital data processing devices typically require a network subsystem (e.g., as embodied in a network interface card) to establish the communications link between the devices. The communications link interconnecting digital data processing devices can include elements of a data coinmunications network, a point to point connection, a bus, and/or any other type of digital data path capable of conveying processor-readable data. [0049] A data communications network (e.g., Internet, intranets, etc.) can comprise a series of network nodes that can be interconnected by network devices and communication lines (e.g., public carrier lines, private lines, satellite lines, etc.) that enable the network nodes to communicate. The transfer of data (e.g., messages) between network nodes can be facilitated by network devices, such as routers, switches, multiplexers, bridges, gateways, etc., that can manipulate and/or route data from a source node to a destination node regardless of any dissimilarities in the network topology (e.g., bus, star, token ring), spatial distance (local, metropolitan, or wide area network), transmission technology (e.g., TCP/IP, Systems Network Architecture), data type (e.g., data, voice, video, or multimedia), nature of connection (e.g., switched, non-switched, dial-up, dedicated, or virtual), and/or physical link (e.g., optical fiber, coaxial cable, twisted pair, wireless, etc.) between the source and destination network nodes.

License Authentication

[0050] In another aspect, the disclosed technology can mitigate the risk of infringing a content owner's rights in protectable content by operating as a trusted, third-party license authority between content owners and content users to ensure that a license governing at least some aspects of the protectable content is authentic and thus validly represents the restrictions imposed by content owners pertaining to the use, distribution, modification, combination, interaction, and/or other manipulation of such content.

[0051] The disclosed technology can also be used in determining a measure of risk that pertains to a level of confidence that a particular license is authentic. In one illustrative embodiment, the disclosed technology can be used to determine a license profile for a particular license of interest and the risk measure can be based, at least in part, on the entity that developed such license profile. For example, a relatively high risk measure that represents a relatively low- level of confidence that a particular license is authentic and/or that such license adequately identifies a content owner's rights in a protectable content of interest may be encountered if the content owner generates a conesponding license profile without the benefit of automated content analysis and/or license evaluation software tools/processes and/or without involvement of a third-party entity to validate the accuracy of the license profile. Similarly, a relatively moderate risk measure that represents a relatively medium-level of confidence that a particular license is authentic and/or that such license adequately identifies a content owner's rights in a protectable content of interest may be encountered if a content owner employs automated content analysis and/or license evaluation software tools/processes to generate a conesponding license profile, but does not validate the accuracy of the license profile using a third-party entity. Further, a relatively low risk measure that represents a relatively high-level of confidence may be encountered if automated content analysis and/or license evaluation software tools/processes are used to generate the conesponding license profile and one or more third-party (independent) entities validate the accuracy of such license profile.

[0052] The risk measure and/or confidence level can serve as a basis for one or more entries in an actuarial data structure (e.g., database table), which can subsequently be used to determine one or more provisions in an insurance contract (e.g., pertaining to a premium) that may insure particular content users, manipulators, and/or aggregators for potential liability that may arise upon infringement of a content owner's rights in protectable content. In one embodiment, relatively low risk measures and high confidence levels may enable content users/aggregators to purchase liability insurance for potential infringement of protectable content at a favorable premium, whereas moderate risk measures and confidence levels may result in higher premiums and relatively high risk measures and low confidence levels may result in more burdensome premiums or may perhaps result in a lack of insurance caniers willing to engage in such liability insurance contracts.

[0053] In brief overview and with reference to an illustrative embodiment of at least some aspects of the disclosed technology as shown in FIGs. 3A and 3B, a content owner 302 (and/or other entities/software processes authorized to act on behalf of such content owner 302) can register one or more licenses 304 of one or more protectable and/or aggregated content elements 306 with a trusted, third-party entity (e.g., the license authority 308), which can subsequently authenticate the validity of such licenses 304 and their applicability to particular protectable content elements 306, upon request by one or more users 310 of such content 306. Licenses 304 for particular protectable content elements 306 can be registered with a license authority 308 by, for example, generating content identifiers 312 that substantially uniquely identify particular protectable content elements of interest 306, generating one or more license profiles 314 that represent attributes 316 of conesponding licenses 304, and storing such content identifiers 312 and license profiles 314 within a repository 318 residing in and/or otherwise accessible to a digital data processing device 320 supporting the operations of the license authority 308. The license authority 308 can compute an identifier 322 that substantially uniquely represents a license 304 and its association with a conesponding protectable content 306 based, at least in part, on the license profile 314 and content identifier 312 associated therewith. A content owner 302 can provide the computed license identifier 322 to a content user 310 prior to, concunently, or after providing the user 310 with the conesponding protectable content 306 and the user 310 can authenticate the validity and applicability of the content's license 304 by, for example, requesting that the license authority 308 confirm that the license identifier 324 received from the content owner 302 is substantially equivalent to the license identifier 322 previously computed by such license authority 308.

[0054] In more detail and with reference now also to an illustrative operation as shown in FIG. 4, a content owner 302 can provide a product/license identification software process 326 with access (e.g., network access, web access, and/or any other type of direct or indirect access) to one or more protectable/aggregated content elements of interest 306 and such software process

326 can apply one or more hash algorithms 328 and/or other algorithm types 330 to the protectable/aggregated content elements of interest 306 to compute a content identifier 312 thereof (402). Those skilled in the art will recognize that the particular hash algorithm 328 used to transform characters within the protectable/aggregated content elements 306 into one or more representative values (i.e., content identifiers 312) may employ, for example, a division remainder method, a folding method, a radix transformation method, a digit reanangement method, a secure hash method, an MD2 method, an MD4 method, an MD5 method, and/or any other type of methodology, technique, or algorithm that can substantially uniquely identify protectable/aggregated content elements of interest 306. Although the illustrative embodiment shown in FIGs. 3 A and 3B shows that the protectable/aggregated content 306 is located on a content owner's digital data processing device 332, those skilled in the art will recognize that such content can be located within a repository 318 associated with a digital data processing device 320 of the license authority 308, a repository (not shown) associated with a digital data processing device (not shown) off a third-party validating entity 334, and/or in any other type off storage media communicatively coupled to the software processes of the license authority 308. Further, one or more aspects of the product/license identification software process 326 (and/or one or more aspects of other software processes of the license authority 308) and/or associated algorithm types 330 (e.g., hash algorithms 328) can be performed on digital data processing devices that are different from that of the license authority 308 such as, for example, on a content owner's digital data processing device 332, on a digital data processing device associated with a third-party validating entity 334, and/or on any other digital data processing device communicatively coupled to the digital data processing device 320 of the license authority 308. [0055] Prior to, concunently, or following the computation of a content identifier 312 for a particular protectable/aggregated content of interest 306, a content owner 302 and/or a third- party validating entity 334 can access a license evaluation software process 336 of the license authority 308 to evaluate one or more licenses 304 associated with a particular protectable/aggregated content of interest 306 to determine relevant subsets of known license attributes 338 that may be assigned/associated to represent such licenses 304 in one or more license profiles 314 (404). Known license attributes 338 can, for example, represent types of license restrictions that may occur in licenses that affect transactions in one or more industries (e.g., music industry, software industry, etc.) and/or operational environments. The license evaluation software process 336 can identify relevant subsets of the known license attributes 338 by, for example, mapping restrictions contained within license terms in the licenses 304 to particular known license attributes, evaluating information provided by a content owner 302, evaluating information provided by a third-party validating entity, and/or based on information provided by any other authorized entity and/or software process. Once the relevant subsets of the known license attributes 338 have been identified and assigned to represent the licenses 304 of the protectable/aggregated content 306, the license evaluation software process 336 can further analyze the licenses 304 to assign one or more restriction values 340 (specifying an applicability of an associated attribute), use values 342 (specifying a permissible degree of distribution that may cause an associated attribute to become applicable), interaction values 344 (specifying a permissible degree of manipulation that may be associated with a particular attribute), and/or other values (e.g., license text excerpts and/or other license identifying infonnation associated with an attribute) to one or more of the assigned attributes 316 and these attributes and attribute values can be stored in one or more license profiles 314 in a repository 318 accessible by one or more digital data processing devices 320, 332, which may facilitate future processing activity within the licensing authority architecture 308 if and/or when such licenses 304 are encountered again. Although the assigned attributes 316 in the FIG. 3B embodiment indicate that conesponding restriction, use, and interaction values 340-344 are assigned to each of the attributes 316, those skilled in the art will recognize that one or more of such values 340-344, separately or in any combination, need not be assigned to any particular attribute 316 and that the illustrated embodiment is merely exemplary of one possible embodiment and is not intended to be limiting in any respect. Further, the licenses 304 of one or more protectable content elements 306 can include license terms that specify default distribution and/or manipulation restrictions that may be represented as common use and/or interaction values for at least some of the attributes 316 of conesponding license profiles 314, although the disclosed technology can also accommodate particular use and/or interaction values that may ovenide such common/default values as required. In one illustrative embodiment, default restrictions in license terms can be represented as use, interaction, and/or other types of values that can be shared among license attributes 316 by, for example, assigning such default values to conesponding attributes (that do not have any oveniding values that supersede the default values), assigning pointers and/or other indicia to the conesponding attributes so that default values can be referenced and taken into account during subsequent processing activities, and/or via any other method or mechanism which provides access to such default values during processing activities performed by one or more software processes of the license authority 308. [0056] In an embodiment in which a license 304 for a particular protectable/aggregated content of interest 306 does not exist, has not been identified, and/or is not accessible by one or more of the software processes of the license authority 308, the content owner 302 and/or third- party validating entity 334 can instruct a content analysis software process 346 to analyze the protectable/aggregated content of interest 306 to identify an applicable license 304 and/or license profile 314 thereof (if such license profile already exists). The content analysis software process 346 can, for example, search for particular character strings (e.g., segments of software code), embedded copyright information, embedded license information, embedded ownership information, embedded version information, and/or any other type of indicia useful in identifying a license 304 of a protectable/aggregated content of interest 306. Once the content analysis software process 346 has identified the license 304, the license evaluation software process 336 can form a corresponding license profile 314 as previously described, if such license profile 314 does not already exist.

[0057] In one illustrative embodiment, a content owner 302 may seek to register an aggregated content 306 that includes two or more constituent protectable content elements with the license authority 308 in which case, the license evaluation software process 336 can evaluate the terms in an aggregated license 304 to form an aggregated license profile 314, as discussed above (assuming that such aggregated license 304 exists). However, in embodiments where an aggregated license does not exist and/or is not accessible, the license evaluation software process 336 can form license profiles 314 representing licenses of the aggregated content's constituent protectable content elements and a license aggregation software process 348 of the license authority 308 can analyze the attributes and attribute values of such constituent license profiles to determine specific attribute and attribute value compatibilities and/or incompatibilities that can be used to form an aggregated license profile and/or aggregated license for the aggregated content of interest. The functionality provided by the license evaluation software process 336 and the license aggregation software process 348 is described above with respect to, for example, license evaluation software process 134 and license aggregation software process 136, respectively. [0058] With continuing reference to FIGs. 3 A, 3B, and 4, a content owner 302 can convey a protectable/aggregated content of interest 306, a corresponding content identifier 312, a conesponding license 304, and/or a conesponding license profile 314 to a third-party validating entity 334 by, for example, including one or more of such elements 306, 312, 304, 314 in a validation request message 350 (which may be encrypted and digitally signed) that is transmitted to the third-party validating entity 334 directly or via a network 352. Alternatively, the validation request message 350 can provide information (e.g., user identifier and/or password) to the third- party validating entity 334, which enables such entity 334 to access the protectable/aggregated content of interest 306, the conesponding content identifier 312, the conesponding license 304, and/or the conesponding license profile 314 (e.g., via a secure web site).

[0059] In response to receiving the validation request message 350, the third-party validating entity 334, which may (but need not) be associated with the license authority 308, can access one or more of the product/license identification, content analysis, license evaluation, and/or license aggregation software processes 326, 346, 336, 348 that may be operating locally and/or on the digital data processing device 320 of the license authority 308 and apply one or more of such processes 326, 346, 336, 348 to one or more of the protectable/aggregated content of interest 306, the conesponding content identifier 312, the conesponding license 304, and/or the conesponding license profile 314 to form a validated content identifier and/or validated license profile (406). The validated content identifier and/or validated license profile can be compared with conesponding content identifiers and/or conesponding license profiles formed by the content owner 302 (if any such identifiers or profiles were computed by the content owner) to identify enors and/or inconsistencies therein. The validated content identifier, validated license profile, identifier 354 of the content owner 302, identifier 354 of the third-party validating entity, and/or other related data/information (e.g.^', the protectable/aggregated content 306, license 304, etc.) can be incorporated into a registration request message 355 (e.g., an electronic mail message, an electronic file, a stream of digital data packets, etc.) that may be encrypted, digitally signed, and transmitted to a request handling software process 356 of the license authority 308 via the network 352 for registration (408).

[0060] As previously described, the particular mechanism used to generate and convey a content identifier 312 and/or license profile 314 to a license authority 308 can determine a measure of risk 358 that may affect one or more provisions in an insurance contract, which insures interested parties from unwittingly infringing a content owner's rights in a protectable/aggregated content 306. For example, a relatively low measure of risk 358 may be obtained when a third-party validating entity 334 employs product/license identification, content analysis, license evaluation, and/or license aggregation software processes 326, 346, 336, 348 to form the content identifier 312 and/or license profile 314 for a particular protectable/aggregated content 306 as compared with a relatively high measure of risk 358 that may be obtained when a content owner does not use a third-party validating entity 334 or the software processes 326, 346,

336, 348 of the license authority 308. [0061] Upon receipt of a registration request message 355 from a content owner 302 or third- party validating entity 334, a request handling software process 356 can decrypt, parse, and/or otherwise process the message 355 to access the content identifier 312 associated with a protectable/aggregated content of interest 306, the license profile 314 representing a license 304 associated with the protectable/aggregated content of interest 306, the identifier 354 identifying the content owner 302, and/or any other information that may be contained therein (e.g., protectable/aggregated content 306, license 304, identifier 354 of the third-party validating entity, indicia pertaining to the mechanism procedure used to form the content identifier 312 and/or license profile 314, etc.) (410). The request handling software process 356 can analyze the format (e.g., number of digits, alphanumeric sequences, etc.) of the content identifier 312 to identify the particular algorithm type 330 used to form such content identifier 312 (412). The request handling software process 356 can further instruct a product/license identification software process 326 to compute a license identifier 322 that substantially uniquely identifies the license 304 of the protectable/aggregated content of interest 306 by applying, for example, one or more algorithm types 330 (e.g., hash algorithms 328) to the content identifier 312, license profile 314, owner/validator identifier 354, and/or algorithm type 330 used to form the content identifier 312 (414). The request handling software process 356 can store the computed license identifier 322, content identifier 312, identified algorithm type 330, license profile 314, owner/validator identifier 354, protectable/aggregated content 306, license 304, and/or other related information in one or more repositories 318 communicatively coupled to the digital data processing device 320 of the license authority 308 and can associate such elements in one or more data structures (not shown) to effectuate registration of the license 304 and/or protectable/aggregated content 306.

[0062] Once the license 304 and/or protectable/aggregated content are registered, the request handling software process 356 can form a reply message that transmits the resulting computed license identifier 322 to the content owner 302 (416). The content owner 302 can electronically distribute (e.g., incorporate into an email message, make available on a web site, etc.) and/or otherwise convey (e.g., mail a CD, DVD, floppy disk, and/or other media) the computed license identifier 322, the associated protectable/aggregated content 306, the associated license 304, and/or other data/information to one or more content users 310 (418). In one embodiment, the computed license identifier 322 can conespond to a code that enables the protectable/aggregated content 306 to partially or fully operate. Upon receipt of the information transmitted from the content owner 302, the content user 310 may want to confirm that such information is authentic and has not been tampered with and/or otherwise manipulated by unauthorized parties. Accordingly, the content user 310 can instruct one or more software processes (not shown) executing on a digital data processing device 360 accessible to the content user 310, such as processes associated with a web browser software application, to form and transmit an authenticity request message 362 that may be encrypted and digitally signed and which includes a license identifier 324 received from the content owner 302 to the request handling software process 356 of the license authority 308 (420). [0063] Upon receipt of the authenticity request message 362, the request handling software process 356 can decrypt and/or otherwise manipulate the message 362 to access the license identifier 324 transmitted by the content user 310. The request handling software process 356 can instruct a risk assessment software process 364 to authenticate the received license identifier 324 by, for example, comparing the received license identifier 324 with the computed license identifier 322 that was previously formed and transmitted by the software processes of the license authority 308 to the content owner 302 to confirm that the license identifiers 324, 322 are substantially equivalent (422). If the license identifiers 322, 324 are not substantially equivalent, then the request handling software process 356 can form and transmit a reply message to the content user 310 that the license identifier 324 received from the content owner 302 by the content user 310 has failed authentication. If the risk assessment software process 364 determines that the license identifiers 322, 324 are substantially equivalent, the process 364 can form authenticity indicia 366 (e.g., one or more risk measures 358) that can be transmitted to and/or otherwise accessed by the content user 310 (424). [0064] Authenticity indicia 366 can be interpreted to inform the content user 310 of a risk of infringing a content owner's rights in a protectable/aggregated content of interest 306 that may be based on, for example, a content owner's authority to license the content of interest 306 (e.g., whether the content owner 302 has full or partial rights to license the content 306 and/or whether the rights of other content owners may be infringed), a tampering and/or other unauthorized manipulation of the content 306 and/or associated license 304 (e.g., whether unauthorized entities have improperly modified, copied, distributed, and/or otherwise manipulated the content 306, whether entities are perpetrating a fraud on the content user 310 by feigning a lawful interest in the content 306, etc.), and/or on any other bases that expose a content user 310 to a risk of infringing a content owner's rights in a content of interest 306. Authenticity indicia 366 can include, for example, one or more of the following, separately or in any combination: a validated/authenticated content identifier 312, a validated/authenticated protectable/aggregated content 306, a validated/authenticated license 304, a validated/authenticated license profile 314, and/or one or more risk measures 358. Authenticity indicia 366 that has been validated and/or authenticated can indicate to the content user 310 that the license authority has authenticated the validity of such indicia and/or associated content 304 and/or data and has a particular confidence in the accuracy and reliability of such content/data, as expressed in one or more of the risk measures 358.

[0065] Risk measures 358 can be computed by the risk assessment software process 364 based on, for example, numerical weights that can be associated with the type of entities involved in the formation of the content identifier 312 and license profile 314 of a protectable/aggregated content of interest 306. /For example, greater numerical weights can be applied to content identifiers 312 and license profiles 314 that are formed by automated software processes 326, 346, 336, 348 and independent, third-party validating entities 334 than to content identifiers 312 and license profiles 314 that are formed by a content owner 302 and without having the benefit of one or more automated processes 326, 346, 336, 348 and/or validating entities 334. The relatively greater numerical weights encountered by using automated processes 326, 346, 336, 348 and independent third-party validating entities 334 can conespond to a relatively higher confidence level (relatively low risk level) that a license 304 of a protectable/aggregated content 306 is accurate and reliable and may thus present little, if any, risk of infringing a content owner's rights in a content of interest 306. Similarly, relatively smaller numerical weights encountered when automated processes 326, 346, 336, 348 and/or validating entities 334 are not used can correspond to a relatively lower confidence level (relatively high risk level) that a license 304 of the protectable/aggregated content 306 is accurate and reliable and may thus present a significant and quantifiable infringement risk. Risk measures 358 that are computed from such exemplary numerical weights can be incorporated into one or more actuarial tables that can form the basis for one or more provisions of an insurance contract targeted at insuring against potential infringement. Accordingly, content users 310, content distributors, content aggregators, insurance caniers, and/or other interested entities can use such risk measures 358 to formulate a liability insurance contract, negotiate better license terms with content owners 302, increase an end-user price of such content 306, and/or otherwise mitigate potential legal and/or financial liability prior to using and/or otherwise interacting with the content 306.

[0066] In one illustrative embodiment, a measure of risk 358 that may form an entry in an actuarial risk table can be determined from an equation whose variables are based on an accuracy/reliability of a license profile 314 and/or on an association/conelation between a license profile 314 and a particular protectable/aggregated content of interest 306. These variables can lie within a continuum, from a relatively low accuracy/conelation to a relatively high accuracy/conelation. For example, a variable based on an accuracy of a license profile 314 can exhibit increasing values as the accuracy of the license profile 314 increases in the following exemplary continuum (from low to high accuracy): a) a license profile 314 is not formed for a protectable content of interest 306, b) a license profile 314 is partially formed for a protectable content of interest 306 by a content owner 302 of such content 306, c) a license profile 314 is fully formed for a protectable content of interest 306 by a content owner 302 of such content 306, d) an aggregated license profile 314 is fully formed by an aggregated content owner for an aggregated content of interest that includes two or more constituent protectable content elements, e) an aggregated license profile 314 is fully formed by analyzing a relatively high level portion of an aggregated content of interest using one or more automated software processes 326, 346, 336, 348, f) an aggregated license profile 314 is fully formed by comprehensively analyzing an aggregated content of interest, including an analysis of its constituent protectable content elements, using one or more automated software processes 326, 346, 336, 348, g) an aggregated license profile 314 is fully formed by comprehensively analyzing an aggregated content of interest, including an analysis of its constituent protectable content elements, using one or more automated software processes 326, 346, 336, 348 and where license profiles of the constituent protectable content elements are validated by a third-party validating entity 334, h) same as prior element, except also validate the aggregated license profile 314 using the third-party validating entity 334, and i) same as prior element, except also have the third-party validating entity 334 fonn the aggregated and constituent license profiles using the automated software processes 326, 346, 336, 348. Similarly, a variable based on a conelation between a license profile 314 and its associated protectable/aggregated content 306 can exhibit increasing values as the correlation between such profile 314 and content 306 increases in the following exemplary continuum (from low to high conelation): a) there is no conelation between a license profile 314 and a particular protectable/aggregated content of interest 306, b) a content owner 302 of a protectable/aggregated content 306 specifies that the content 306 and associated profile 314 are conelated, c) a content owner 302 of a protectable/aggregated content 306 specifies that the content 306 and associated profile 314 are conelated and the identity of such content owner 302 is verified by an independent third-party entity (e.g., a third-party validating entity 334, a digital certificate authority, a license authority 308, etc.), d) same as prior element, except also submit the protectable/aggregated content 306 and associated profile 314 to the independent third-party entity, which can subsequently confirm the identity of the submitted content 306 and profile 314 (by, for example, issuing a digital certificate indicative of such confirmed identity), and e) same as prior element, except also have the independent third-party entity analyze the contents of the protectable/aggregated content 306 relative to the associated profile 314 to confirm/verify a conelation between such content 306 and profile 314 (by, for example, issuing a digital certificate indicative of such confirmed/verified conelation).

[0067] Although the disclosed technology has been described with reference to specific embodiments, it is not intended that such details should be regarded as limitations upon the scope of the invention, except as and to the extent that they are included in the accompanying claims.

[0068] What is claimed is:

Claims

1. A method comprising: identifying a first license associated with a first protectable content; providing a plurality of known license attributes; associating at least some of the known license attributes with the first license; assigning a restriction value to each of the associated license attributes, the restriction values of the associated license attributes specifying particular restrictions pertaining to the first protectable content; assigning at least one use value and at least one interaction value to at least some of the associated license attributes, the at least one use value representing a permissible degree of distribution of the first protectable content and the at least one interaction value representing a permissible degree of manipulation of the first protectable content; comparing the assigned restriction, use, and interaction values of the at least some of the associated license attributes with corresponding attribute values associated with a second license, the second license being associated with a second protectable content; and based on the comparison, determining attributes associated with a third protectable content, the third protectable content being at least partly based on a combination of at least some aspects of the first and second protectable content.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first protectable content and the second protectable content conespond to different software elements.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the software elements are compliant with an open source definition.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein the first protectable content is compliant with an open source definition and the second protectable content is not compliant with the open source definition.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first protectable content conesponds to at least one of a multimedia presentation, a video segment, an audio segment, a textual representation, a work of art, a visual representation, a technological know-how, a business know-how, and a contract right.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the license attributes associated with the first license conespond to at least one of a software code format, a software naming convention, a software code annotation, a warranty, a reverse-engineering activity, a patent litigation activity, a standards body, a violation of intellectual property rights, and a textual description of at least one aspect of the first license.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the assigned restriction values correspond to at least one of a prohibition, a requirement, and a nullity.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the assigned restriction values are set to at least one of true, false, required, don't care, forbidden, 1, 0, -1, and text.

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein the assigned use values conespond to at least one of an acquisition, a personal use, a research use, an organizational use, a limited distribution, and an unlimited distribution of at least one aspect of the first protectable content.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the assigned interaction values correspond to at least one of an original element, a modified element, a group of distinct elements, a group of interconnected elements, a group of elements capable of providing a desired functionality, a plurality of interoperable groups of elements capable of providing a plurality of functions, an unrestricted manipulation of elements, and an unrestricted ownership of elements of at least one aspect of the first protectable content.

11. The method of claim 1 , further comprising: analyzing the first protectable content to identify the first license.

12. The method of claim 1, further comprising: storing the restriction values, use values, and interaction values assigned to the at least some of the associated license attributes of the first license; storing the conesponding attribute values associated with the second license; based on the comparison of values, identifying values associated with the attributes associated with the third protectable content, the third protectable content being associated with a third license; storing the identified values associated with the attributes of the third protectable content; and using the stored attribute values of at least one of the first license, second license, and third license to determine attributes of a fourth protectable content, the fourth protectable content being based on a combination including at least some aspects of at least one of the first protectable content, second protectable content, and third protectable content.

13. The method of claim 1, further comprising: storing the restriction values, use values, and interaction values assigned to the at least some of the associated license attributes of the first license; storing the conesponding attribute values associated with the second license; based on the comparison of values, identifying values associated with the attributes associated with the third protectable content, the third protectable content being associated with a third license; storing the identified values associated with the attributes of the third protectable content; and using the stored attribute values associated with the third protectable content to determine attribute values of a fourth protectable content, the fourth protectable content being based on a combination including at least some aspects of the third protectable content.

14. The method of claim 13, further comprising: based on the attribute values of the fourth protectable content, determining a plurality of license alternatives for the fourth protectable content.

15. The method of claim 14, further comprising: selecting one of the plurality of license alternatives based on an operational environment associated with the fourth protectable content.

16. The method of claim 14, further comprising: storing the plurality of license alternatives in a network-accessible location.

17. The method of claim 1, further comprising: providing a third license representative of the attributes associated with the third protectable content.

18. The method of claim 1, further comprising: based on the attributes associated with the third protectable content, determining a plurality of license alternatives for the third protectable content.

19. The method of claim 18, further comprising: selecting one of the plurality of license alternatives based on an operational environment associated with the third protectable content.

20. The method of claim 18, further comprising: storing the plurality of license alternatives in a network-accessible location.

21. The method of claim 1 , wherein the at least one assigned use value is equivalent to a default use value associated with the first license.

22. The method of claim 1 , wherein the at least one assigned use value ovenides a default use value associated with the first license.

23. The method of claim 1 , wherein the at least one assigned interaction value is equivalent to a default interaction value associated with the first license.

24. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one assigned interaction value overrides a default interaction value associated with the first license.

25. The method of claim 1 , wherein the assigned restriction, use, and interaction values of the at least some of the associated license attributes of the first license ovenide at least some of the conesponding attribute values associated with the second license to form attribute values associated with the third protectable content.

26. The method of claim 1, wherein the assigned restriction, use, and interaction values of the at least some of the associated license attributes of the first license coexist along with at least some of the corresponding attribute values associated with the second license as at least some attribute values of the attributes associated with the third protectable content.

27. The method of claim 1, further comprising: detecting event information associated with at least one of an error, a warning, and a conflict generated during the comparison, the event information including indicia pertaining to at least one of an event type, a frequency of occunence of the event type, a related use value, a related interaction value, and an identifier associated with at least one of the first license and second license; and storing the event information in a data structure.

28. The method of claim 1 , further comprising: assigning at least one source value to each of the attributes associated with the third protectable content, the source values identifying attribute information associated with at least one of the first and second licenses that affected values associated with particular ones of the attributes of the third protectable content.

29. A data structure comprising: a plurality of first license attributes associated with a first license, at least some of the first license attributes including restriction, use, and interaction values, wherein restriction values specify particular restrictions pertaining to a first protectable content, use values represent a permissible degree of distribution of the first protectable content, and interaction values represent a permissible degree of manipulation of the first protectable content; a plurality of second license attributes associated with a second license, at least some of the second license attributes including restriction, use, and interaction values, wherein restriction values specify particular restrictions pertaining to a second protectable content, use values represent a permissible degree of distribution of the second protectable content, and interaction values represent a permissible degree of manipulation of the second protectable content; and a plurality of aggregated license attributes associated with an aggregated license, at least some of the aggregated license attributes being based upon a comparison of the restriction, use, and interaction values associated with the first license with conesponding values associated with the second license, wherein the aggregated license attributes affect at least one operation of an aggregated content formed, at least in part, by a combination of at least some aspects of the first and second protectable contents.

30. The data structure of claim 29, wherein the first protectable content and the second protectable content correspond to different software elements.

31. The data structure of claim 30, wherein the software elements are compliant with an open source definition.

32. The data structure of claim 30, wherein the first protectable content is compliant with an open source definition and the second protectable content is not compliant with tlie open source definition.

33. The data structure of claim 29, wherein the first protectable content conesponds to at least one of a multimedia presentation, a video segment, an audio segment, a textual representation, a work of art, a visual representation, a technological know-how, a business know-how, and a contract right.

34. The data structure of claim 29, wherein the first license attributes associated with the first license correspond to at least one of a software code format, a software naming convention, a software code annotation, a wananty, a reverse-engineering activity, a patent litigation activity, a standards body, a violation of intellectual property rights, and a textual description of at least one aspect of the first license.

35. The data structure of claim 29, wherein the restriction values of the first license attributes conespond to at least one of a prohibition, a requirement, and a nullity.

36. The data structure of claim 29, wherein the restriction values of the first license attributes are set to at least one of true, false, required, don't care, forbidden, 1, 0, -1, and text.

37. The data structure of claim 29, wherein the use values of the first license attributes conespond to at least one of an acquisition, a personal use, a research use, an organizational use, a limited distribution, and an unlimited distribution of at least one aspect of the first protectable content.

38. The data structure of claim 29, wherein the interaction values of the first license attributes conespond to at least one of an original element, a modified element, a group of distinct elements, a group of interconnected elements, a group of elements capable of providing a desired functionality, a plurality of interoperable groups of elements capable of providing a plurality of functions, an unrestricted manipulation of elements, and an unrestricted ownership of elements of at least one aspect of the first protectable content.

39. The data structure of claim 29, wherein the first protectable content is identified based on an analysis of the first license.

40. The data structure of claim 29, further comprising: a plurality of license alternatives including license terms based on the restriction, use, and interaction values of the first and second protectable contents.

41. The data structure of claim 40, wherein the license alternatives are stored in a network- accessible location. •

42. The data structure of claim 29, wherein at least some of the use values of the first license attributes conespond to a default use value associated with the first license.

43. The data structure of claim 29, wherein at least one of the use values of the first license attributes ovenides a default use value associated with the first license.

44. The data structure of claim 29, wherein at least some of the interaction values of the first license attributes conespond to a default interaction value associated with the first license.

45. The data structure of claim 29, wherein at least one of the interaction values of the first license attributes ovenides a default interaction value associated with the first license.

46. The data structure of claim 29, wherein at least some of the restriction, use, and interaction values of the first license attributes override at least some of the restriction, use, and interaction values of the second license attributes to form at least some of the aggregated license attributes.

47. The data structure of claim 29, wherein at least some of the restriction, use, and interaction values of the first license attributes coexist along with at least some of the restriction, use, and interaction values of the second license attributes to form at least some of the aggregated license attributes.

48. The data structure of claim 29, further comprising: event information associated with at least one of an enor, a warning, and a conflict generated during the comparison, the event information including indicia pertaining to at least one of an event type, a frequency of occurrence of the event type, a related use value, a related interaction value, and an identifier associated with at least one of the first license and second license.

49. The data structure of claim 29, further comprising: a source value assigned to each of the aggregated license attributes, the source values identifying attribute information associated with at least one of the first and second licenses that affected values associated with particular aggregated license attributes.

50. A method comprising: identifying a first plurality of license attributes associated with a first protectable content; identifying a second plurality of license attributes associated with a second protectable content; assigning a restriction value to each of the first plurality of license attributes specifying particular restrictions pertaining to the first protectable content; assigning a restriction value to each of the second plurality of license attributes specifying particular restrictions pertaining to the second protectable content; assigning at least one of a use value and an interaction value to at least some of the first plurality of license attributes, the assigned use values of the first plurality of license attributes representing a permissible degree of distribution of the first protectable content and the interaction values of the first plurality of license attributes representing a permissible degree of manipulation of the first protectable content; assigning at least one of a use value and an interaction value to at least some of the second plurality of license attributes, the assigned use values of the second plurality of license attributes representing a permissible degree of distribution of the second protectable content and the interaction values of the second plurality of license attributes representing a permissible degree of manipulation of the second protectable content; comparing at least some of the assigned restriction, use, and interaction values of the first plurality of license attributes to corresponding assigned restriction, use, and interaction values of the second plurality of license attributes; and based, at least in part, on the comparison, determining a plurality of license alternatives affecting an aggregated content, the aggregated content being based on a combination of at least some aspects of the first and second protectable content.

51. The method of claim 50, wherein the first protectable content and the second protectable content conespond to different software elements.

52. The method of claim 51 , wherein the software elements are compliant with an open source definition.

53. The method of claim 51 , wherein the first protectable content is compliant with an open source definition and the second protectable content is not compliant with the open source definition.

54. The method of claim 50, wherein the first protectable content conesponds to at least one of a multimedia presentation, a video segment, an audio segment, a textual representation, a work of art, a visual representation, a technological know-how, a business know-how, and a contract right.

55. The method of claim 50, wherein at least one of the first plurality of license attributes conesponds to at least one of a software code format, a software naming convention, a software code annotation, a warranty, a reverse-engineering activity, a patent litigation activity, a standards body, a violation of intellectual property rights, and a textual description of at least one aspect of the first protectable content.

56. The method of claim 50, wherein each of the restriction values assigned to the first and second plurality of license attributes corresponds to one of a prohibition, a requirement, and a nullity.

57. The method of claim 50, wherein at least one of the assigned use values of the first plurality of license attributes conesponds to at least one of an acquisition, a personal use, a research use, an organizational use, a limited distribution, and an unlimited distribution of at least one aspect of the first protectable content.

58. The method of claim 50, wherein at least one of the assigned interaction values of the first plurality of license attributes conesponds to at least one of an original element, a modified element, a group of distinct elements, a group of interconnected elements, a group of elements capable of providing a desired functionality, a plurality of interoperable groups of elements capable of providing a plurality of functions, an unrestricted manipulation of elements, and an unrestricted ownership of elements of at least one aspect of the first protectable content.

59. The method of claim 50, further comprising: analyzing the first protectable content to identify the first plurality of license attributes.

60. The method of claim 50, wherein at least some of the use values assigned to at least some of the first and second plurality of license attributes are equivalent to a default use value.

61. The method of claim 50, wherein at least one of the use values assigned to the first plurality of license attributes ovenides a default use value.

62. The method of claim 50, wherein at least some of the interaction values assigned to at least some of the first and second plurality of license attributes are equivalent to a default interaction value.

63. The method of claim 50, wherein at least one of the interaction values assigned to the first plurality of license attributes ovenides a default interaction value.

64. The method of claim 50, wherein the assigned restriction, use, and interaction values of the first plurality of license attributes ovenide at least some of the restriction, use, and interaction values assigned to the second plurality of license attributes to form attribute values associated with the aggregated content.

65. The method of claim 50, wherein at least some of the assigned restriction, use, and interaction values of the first plurality of license attributes coexist along with at least some of the restriction, use, and interaction values assigned to the second plurality of license attributes as at least some attribute values associated with the aggregated content.

66. A method comprising: receiving a request to identify a license of an aggregated content, the aggregated content being based, at least in part, on a combination of a plurality of constituent protectable-content elements; identifying a plurality of licenses associated with a first one of the plurality of constituent protectable-content elements; identifying at least one license associated with each of the other constituent protectable- content elements; comparing license attribute values associated with each of the plurality of licenses of the first constituent protectable-content element with conesponding license attribute values associated with each of the other constituent protectable-content elements; based, at least in part, on the comparison, identifying a plurality of license alternatives for the aggregated content; and selecting the requested license of the aggregated content from among the plurality of license alternatives based, at least in part, on an operational environment of the aggregated content.

67. A method comprising: accessing a license profile associated with a protectable content, the license profile identifying attributes affecting at least one operation of the protectable content; accessing an identifier representing the protectable content; and based, at least in part, on the license profile and protectable content identifier, determining an authenticity of a license associated with the protectable content.

68. The method of claim 67, wherein the protectable content corresponds ₍to a software element.

69. The method of claim 68, wherein the software element is compliant with an open source definition.

70. The method of claim 68, wherein the attributes conespond to at least one of a software code fonnat, a software naming convention, a software code annotation, a warranty, a reverse- engineering activity, a patent litigation activity, a standards body, a violation of intellectual property rights, and a textual description of at least one aspect of the protectable content.

71. The method of claim 67, wherein the protectable content corresponds to at least one of a multimedia presentation, a video segment, an audio segment, a textual representation, a work of art, a visual representation, a technological know-how, a business know-how, and a contract right.

72. The method of claim 67, further comprising: executing, on behalf of an owner of the protectable content, a hash algorithm to form the protectable content identifier.

73. The method of claim 72, further comprising: forming, on behalf of the owner of the protectable content, the license profile based on the license associated with the protectable content.

74. The method of claim 73, further comprising: validating, by an entity not associated with the owner of the protectable content, the license profile and the protectable content identifier.

75. The method of claim 73, further comprising: receiving a request message to register the license, the request message including indicia pertaining to the protectable content identifier, the license profile, and the owner.

76. The method of claim 75, wherein the request message is encrypted and digitally signed.

77. The method of claim 67, further comprising: accessing indicia identifying an owner of the protectable content; identifying a type of algorithm used to form the protectable content identifier; and based on the license profile, the protectable content identifier, the indicia identifying the owner, and the type of algorithm used to form the protectable content identifier, computing an identifier associated with the license.

78. The method of claim 77, further comprising: transmitting the computed license identifier to the owner of the protectable content, the computed license identifier being coupled with the protectable content being distributed to at least one user of the protectable content.

79. The method of claim 78, wherein the computed license identifier is encrypted and digitally-signed prior to its transmission to the owner of the protectable content.

80. The method of claim 78, further comprising: receiving a request message to authenticate the license associated with the protectable content from the at least one user of the protectable content; comparing the computed license identifier with a corresponding license identifier provided by the at least one user of the protectable content in the request message; and based on the comparison, providing indicia accessible by the at least one user pertaining to the authenticity of the license.

81. The method of claim 80, wherein the indicia pertaining to the authenticity of the license includes at least one of the license, information identifying an owner of the license, information identifying the owner of the protectable content, and an alphanumeric code enabling the at least one operation of the protectable content.

82. The method of claim 67, wherein determining the authenticity of the license associated with the protectable content comprises: computing an identifier associated with the license based, at least partly, on the license profile and the protectable content identifier; receiving a request message to authenticate the license associated with the protectable content from at least one user of the protectable content; comparing the computed license identifier with a corresponding license identifier provided by the at least one user of the protectable content in the request message; and based on the comparison, providing indicia accessible by the at least one user pertaining to the authenticity of the license.

83. The method of claim 67, wherein at least some of the attributes are assigned at least one restriction value that specifies particular restrictions pertaining to the protectable content.

84. The method of claim 83, wherein the at least one assigned restriction value conesponds to at least one of a prohibition, a requirement, and a nullity.

85. The method of claim 83 , wherein the at least one assigned restriction value conesponds to at least one of true, false, required, don't care, forbidden, 1, 0, -1, and text.

86. The method of claim 67, wherein at least some of the attributes are assigned at least one use value representing a permissible degree of distribution of the protectable content.

87. The method of claim 86, wherein the at least one assigned use value conesponds to at least one of an acquisition, a personal use, a research use, an organizational use, a limited distribution, and an unlimited distribution of at least one aspect of the protectable content.

88. The method of claim 86, wherein the at least one assigned use value is equivalent to a default use associated with the license.

89. The method of claim 86, wherein the at least one assigned use value ovenides a default use value associated with the license.

90. The method of claim 67, wherein at least some of the attributes are assigned at least one interaction value representing a permissible degree of manipulation of the protectable content.

91. The method of claim 90, wherein the at least one assigned interaction value corresponds to at least one of an original element, a modified element, a group of distinct elements, a group of interconnected elements, a group of elements capable of providing a desired functionality, a plurality of interoperable groups of elements capable of providing a plurality of functions, an unrestricted manipulation of elements, and an unrestricted ownership of elements of at least one aspect of the protectable content.

92. The method of claim 90, wherein the at least one assigned interaction value is equivalent to a default interaction associated with the license.

93. The method of claim 90, wherein the at least one assigned interaction value overrides a default interaction value associated with the license.