Patent ID: 8566954

Claim:
A method of authorising provision of in-directed content to a user of an IP communications network, said in-directed content being associated with a presentity subscriber of a presence service, the presence service including authorisation rules regarding users to which the in-directed content may be provided, and wherein the in-directed content is stored at a content server that is not controlled by the presence service, the method comprising: receiving, at an authorisation proxy in the network, a request from the user to be provided with the in-directed content, wherein the authorisation proxy is configured, upon receiving the request for in-directed content, to make use of the presentity's subscriber's own presence data to ascertain which presence element is associated with the in-directed content, and the authorisation proxy is made presence aware by receiving information updates that include information identifying the presentity subscriber associated with the in-directed content; identifying the presentity subscriber associated with the requested in-directed content; the authorisation proxy retrieving the authorisation rules to verify that the user is authorised to receive the in-directed content; subject to the verification, enabling the in-directed content to be provided from the content server the user; and receiving at a presence server in the network, a notification that the in-directed content is available, the notification including an indication of a location from which the in-directed content can be retrieved, the presence server checking the authorisation rules and forwarding the notification to users authorised to receive the in-directed content.