Patent ID: 8041784

Claim:
A central server (Appendix B, FIG. 1 ) for a hybrid peer-to-peer (P2P) content sharing system including, for a particular user, a primary user device (Appendix B, FIG. 1 , device A) comprising a primary sharing engine for sharing content stored on the primary user device and at least one secondary user device (Appendix B, FIG. 1 , devices B, C, and D) comprising a secondary sharing engine for obtaining and sharing at least one version of the content shared by the primary user device (Appendix B, page 5, lines 2-5), comprising: a) a communication interface communicatively coupling the central server to a network (Appendix B, FIG. 1 ); and b) a control system (Appendix B, FIG. 1 , page 6, lines 12-16) associated with the communication interface and adapted to: i) receive a request for content shared by the user from a guest node via the network (Appendix B, page 3, lines 1-13, page 5, lines 16-17, and FIG. 1 ); ii) identify one of the primary user device associated with the particular user and the at least one secondary user device associated with the particular user as a user device for serving the request (Appendix B, Table A, page 5, lines 13-30), wherein the at least one secondary user device is automatically configured based on known capabilities of the at least one secondary user device (Appendix B, page 4, lines 9-12); and iii) route the request to the user device for serving the request via the network (Appendix B, FIG. 1 , page 3, lines 27-37).