Patent ID: 8103593

Claim:
A system for providing a digital rights management (DRM) license, the system comprising: a sink system programmed to request a license for content; a plurality of different source systems each programmed to generate a sub-rights token that includes binding information related to the license, in accordance with the request from the sink system; and a rights mediator programmed to generate a main rights token, and to transmit the main rights token to the sink system; wherein the sub-rights token generated by each of the plurality of different source systems comprise binding information of principals that indicate use subjects related to the license, and binding information of principals that indicate use objects related to the license; wherein the rights mediator is further programmed to generates the main rights token by combining the sub-rights tokens received from the different source systems, and wherein the main rights token comprises relation information indicating relations between each of the binding information included in each of the sub-rights tokens wherein the binding information comprises path information that indicates relations among a plurality of principals to which the license is provided; wherein the sink system is further programmed to: determine a path common to the path information of each of the sub-rights tokens; generate a topology based on the determined common path; generate the license based at least on the generated topology; and provide the license to principals constituting the sink system based on the generated topology.