Patent ID: 8180709

Claim:
A master device including a non-transitory computer readable medium including modules, the modules comprising: a storage module configured to store a plurality of rights objects (ROs) having a plurality of inheritance structures, the plurality of ROs including parent ROs and child ROs; a detection module programmed to perform a first search of the storage module for a child RO corresponding to a predetermined content object; a message generation module programmed to generate a first RO request message for the child RO when the detection module fails to discover the child RO corresponding to the predetermined content object from the storage module; a device interface module configured to transmit the first RO request message to a slave device and receive the child RO corresponding to the predetermined content object from the slave device; the detection module being further programmed to perform a second search of the storage module for a parent RO corresponding to the predetermined content object, wherein the child RO includes an identifier for identifying the parent RO; the message generation module further programmed to generate a second RO request message for the parent RO when the detection module fails to discover the parent RO from the storage module; the device interface module further configured to transmit the second RO request message to the slave device and receive the parent RO from the slave device; and a playback module programmed to play back the predetermined content object using the child RO received from one of the storage module and the slave device and the parent RO received from one of the storage module and the slave device.