Patent ID: 7010500

Claim:
A method of providing an electronic “book-of-the-month” subscription service to a user of a cellular telephone on a cellular telephone network, comprising the steps of: subscribing, by the user, to the on-line subscription service by interacting with a subscription server on the Internet, wherein said step of subscribing comprises the sub-step of: transmitting user-specific information provided by the user to the subscription server which stores the user-specific information, wherein the user-specific information comprises at least one of the capabilities of said cellular telephone, the preferences of the user, and other information related to the user; transmitting to the cellular telephone via the cellular telephone network at predetermined time intervals and without user action offers to download a digitally formatted electronic text, wherein each offer is transmitted with at least a portion of the digitally formatted electronic text being offered, wherein the user can access a preview portion of the at least a portion of the digitally formatted electronic text using the cellular telephone, and wherein the offer to download the digitally formatted electronic text is sent to the user if the digitally formatted electronic text corresponds to the user-specific information stored at the subscription server; transmitting from the cellular telephone via the cellular telephone network a response indicating whether the user wishes to accept the offer to download the digitally formatted electronic text; and if the transmitted at least a portion of the digitally formatted electronic text does not comprise the entire digitally formatted electronic text and the user indicates a desire to purchase the digitally formatted electronic text, the step of: transmitting the remaining portion of the digitally formatted electronic text to the cellular telephone; or if the transmitted at least a portion of the digitally formatted electronic text comprises the entire digitally formatted electronic text and the user indicates a desire to purchase the digitally formatted electronic text, the step of: transmitting a decoding message to the cellular telephone, wherein said decoding message is for unlocking a gateway lock which prevents the user from accessing more than the preview portion of the entire digitally formatted electronic text.