Patent ID: 8341513

Claim:
An item-providing system, comprising: an item delivery system comprising a processor configured to provide electronic books to a user device, wherein the item delivery system is configured to: send an entry to the user device that provides an instruction to retrieve an electronic book from the item-providing system; receive a request by the user device to obtain the electronic book; determine whether to provide a delta form of the requested electronic book or a full form of the requested electronic book; and provide, based on the determination, either the delta form of the requested electronic book or the full form of the requested electronic book to the user device, wherein the delta form of the requested electronic book comprises a difference between current content of the requested electronic book and prior content associated with the requested electronic book as maintained by the user device; wherein the system being configured to determine whether to provide the delta form of the requested electronic book or the full form of the requested electronic book comprises the system being configured to determine a time lag of patching the delta file into the prior content associated with the requested electronic book as maintained by the user device and, wherein the system is configured to provide the full form of the requested electronic book to the user device in response to determining the time lag to be greater than a threshold.