Patent ID: 7891007

Claim:
A method for managing rights in digital content, the method comprising: generating at a client device rights data for a piece of digital content, the rights data representing a set of parameters for licensing the digital content and including: a plurality of specified licensee entities, each specified licensee entity in the generated rights data being one of a person, a group of persons, and a device; and for each of the plurality of licensee entities, a respective set of one or more rights that the licensee entity has in the digital content, each set of one or more rights being specifically applicable to and employable only by the corresponding licensee entity; encrypting at the client device the digital content according to a content key; protecting at the client device the generated rights data and the content key according to a public key of a licensor selected to issue a license for the digital content; submitting from the client device the protected generated rights data with the one or more specified licensee entities and each respective set of rights and the protected content key as a rights label to the licensor, the licensor signing the rights label according to a private key corresponding to the public key after verifying that the set of rights in the rights label can be enforced by the licensor and returning the signed rights label to the client device; and forming at the client device a piece of rights managed digital content by concatenating the signed rights label with the encrypted digital content.