Patent ID: 7555464

Claim:
A method for enabling a single assembly of content to be played on a plurality of player devices, each having at least one available digital rights management (DRM) algorithm, wherein the DRM algorithms for the player devices need not necessarily be the same and at least two DRM algorithms for the player devices are different, comprising: registering, at a programmed processor, a plurality of player devices associated with a client with a database registry, wherein each of the plurality of player devices is enabled to play content using at least one DRM algorithm when an appropriate license has been secured, and wherein at least two DRM algorithms are needed to play content using all of the player devices associated with a client; upon registering the plurality of player devices, registering the one or more associated DRM algorithms with each player device; receiving a request for delivery of specified content to the client and in response thereto searching the database registry for a list of compatible devices and compatible DRM algorithms for the content; obtaining a plurality of licenses to the content, at least one for each DRM algorithm, for the player devices associated with the client; obtaining the content from a content provider; and encrypting the content under each of the DRM algorithms to produce multiple DRM selectively encrypted content, wherein the multiple DRM selectively encrypted content comprises: segments of the specified content that axe unencrypted, and selected segments of the content which are duplicated to produce one copy of the selected content for each of the DRM algorithms with each duplicate copy of the selected segments encrypted under a different one of the DRM algorithms, and wherein, the unencrypted segments of content are assembled together with each of the DRM encrypted duplicate selected segments to produce a single unified content assembly that can be played on any of the player devices.