Patent ID: 7860802

Claim:
A computer-implemented method of authorizing access to digital content on a computing device, the content being in an encrypted form and decryptable according to a decryption key (KD), the computer-implemented method comprising: the computing device obtaining a digital license corresponding to the content, the digital license being issued to the computing device having an authorization portion and a decryption portion wherein: the authorization portion sets forth rights granted in connection with the digital content, authorizes conditions that must be satisfied to exercise the rights granted, and has a digital signature based on a chain of certificates that lead back to a root trust authority identified in the decryption portion, wherein the root trust authority has a particular public/private key pair (PU-ROOT, PR-ROOT); and the decryption portion being accessible only by the computing device the license is issued to, having the decryption key (KD), having the identification of the root trust authority, and having the public key of the root trust authority (PU-ROOT), wherein the public key of the root trust authority (PU-ROOT) was obtained from the chain of certificates that lead back to the root trust authority; the computing device accessing the decryption portion; the computing device obtaining the decryption key (KD) and the root trust authority public key (PU-ROOT) from the accessed decryption portion; the computing device validating the digital signature of the authorization portion by applying the public key (PU-ROOT) of the root trust authority to the digital signature; the computing device verifying that the authorization conditions in the authorization portion allow the exercise of rights in the authorization portion; the computing device verifying that the digital signature has been validated before the decryption key (KD) is employed; and the computing device exercising the rights in the authorization portion by employing the decryption key (KD) to decrypt the encrypted content, wherein the license need not be tied to any particular root trust authority.