Patent ID: 8776203

Claim:
An access authorizing apparatus that is connected to a device having a resource used by a first application, and an access approving apparatus, respectively, via a network, the access authorizing apparatus comprising: a receiving unit configured to receive a token issuance request including first approval information indicating that access to the resource in the device has been approved by a user of the device, from the first application via the network; a first transmitting/receiving unit configured to transmit an access approval request including the first approval information to the access approving apparatus, and receive access enable/disable information indicating whether the access to the resource by the first application is permitted, from the access approving apparatus, wherein the access approving apparatus is configured to previously store approval information for one or more applications that have been approved by the user to access the resource and, upon receiving approval information from an access-seeking application via the access authorizing apparatus, permitting the access-seeking application to access the resource if the access approving apparatus previously holds approval information associated with the access-seeking application and the received approval information corresponds to the previously stored approval information associated with the access-seeking application; a token issuer configured to, when the access enable/disable information received by the first transmitting/receiving unit indicates that the access to the resource is permitted, issue token information that gives authority to access the resource to the first application; and a transmitting unit configured to transmit the token information issued by the token issuer, to the first application, wherein the access authorizing apparatus receives an access approval request which requests approval to access the resource of the device from the first application which has received a resource access request from the device, the access approval request including an URI of the access approving apparatus, and transmits a response including the URI of the access approving apparatus to the device via the first application, the access approving apparatus receives an approval screen request from the device redirecting to a redirection destination based on the URI, returns an access approval screen to the device, receives a user indication of access approval to the access approving apparatus from the device which has received the access approval screen, and transmits a response including the first approval information and an URI of the first application to the device, and the first application is configured to transmit the token issuance request including the first approval information to the access authorizing apparatus when receiving a resource access request including the first approval information from the device redirecting to another redirection destination based on the URI of the first application.