Patent ID: 7975003
Filing Date: 2011-07-05
Classification: G06Q

Abstract:
1. An auditing method for tracking content transactions between a content provider and client stations via an access system operated by an access provider, to facilitate determining an amount of payment to exchange between the access provider and the content provider for content items delivered to the client stations, wherein each content item is either payable or non-payable, the method comprising: transmitting to the client stations descriptions of available content items, wherein the description of each content item provides data specifying whether the content item is payable or non-payable; receiving at the access system, from the client stations, content requests seeking particular ones of the content items, wherein each content request (i) is generated by a client station, (ii) seeks a given content item, and (iii) includes the data provided by the description of the given content item; proxying the content requests from the access system to the content provider to enable the content provider to responsively deliver the requested content items to the requesting client stations; and at the access system, reading the data from the content requests to determine whether the requested content items are payable or non-payable, and making records for content requests that are thereby determined to request payable content items, wherein the records are cooperatively usable thereafter to determine the amount of payment to exchange between the access provider and the content provider for content items delivered to the client stations.