This application is a continuation application claiming priority to Ser. No. 10/530,535, filed Apr. 6, 2005.
The present invention generally relates to interactive hypermedia, electronic publishing systems and copyrights protection, and more particularly to a method, system and computer program for selecting, ordering, retrieving and displaying copyrighted information from physical documents such as printed publications or commercials.
Many publishing products, including consumer books, newspapers and magazines, are directed to two markets. In fact publishers do not only sell a product to readers but they also sell the attention of these readers to advertisers or suppliers of information. For these publishers, the growth and the sharing of the advertising budgets is critical. The competitiveness of a large part of the industry can be defined in the ability to attract advertising revenues.
Publishing products such as newspapers, magazines and books are today mainly distributed to consumers either via thousands of retail outlets or via direct sales and subscriptions. Newspapers and magazines are generally sold directly to end users or through intermediaries and the distribution process does not usually involve retail distribution. Newspapers and magazines must be distributed very quickly, within a narrow time frame, or they become worthless. Delivery time from publisher to readers must be minimal to ensure early-morning readership, to reduce losses on distribution channels and to cut down wastage by limiting the number of returned (pulped) copies. Consumer books are also subject to wastage due to the economics of printing, which entails an initial print based on an estimated demand.
One characteristic of the publishing industry is that most of the publications can be delivered in a digital form. In some cases the electronic or digital form has already supplanted the physical form (e.g., some journals and directories). In other cases, the electronic and physical form of a same publication are complementary (e.g., professional and business magazines and newspapers). In most cases, the physical form remains dominant (e.g., consumer magazines and books). In fact, with the exception of journals and directories which are generally the object of a subscription, most publishers are unable to create profitable digital products able to generate significant incomes.
In the publishing industry, the creation of value mainly is related to the printed form of the products. However, in the last few years the potential threat and opportunity represented by the electronic publishing (e-publishing) has been repeatedly examined. In fact, today, it is widely accepted that electronic publishing has a huge potential for publishers, particularly in the reduction of the distribution costs, in the opening of hitherto uneconomic geographical markets, and in the creation of new revenues via innovative products and services.
During these last years, specific technologies have been deployed within publishing companies to assess the changes in the value chain. Among these technologies, the most salient are:
The publishing industry shows a strong awareness of the potential of the e-commerce and e-business for optimizing editorial and production processes, sales and marketing, and ordering processes. Most publishers are looking for creating new products and services based on these new technologies to enhance their competitiveness.
Today, the widespread use of Internet and mobile communications offers a lot of new opportunities to publishers to combine electronic and printed media and to create “media-adaptive multimedia” products. The philosophy behind the concept of “media-adaptive multimedia” is the following: information must be conveyed to consumers in a form that can be adapted to their (multimedia) requirements. In fact, today there is a need to combine and integrate traditional printed products, digitally printed products, multimedia products, and electronic communications to satisfy the consumer requirements. Consequently, the joint usage of digital objects and printed material appears as an important issue for the publishing industry in general.
Since the competitiveness of a large part of the publishing industry depends on its ability to attract advertising and to sell additional editorial content (particularly digital content), since most publications are distributed on a printed medium, there is a need to access electronic editorial content directly from this printed medium.
However, the antagonism between owners of copyrighted works and consumers of these works has dramatically increased with the emergence of multimedia and electronic supports. Copyrighted works published on a printed media such as newspapers, books or magazines, are most of the time also available in an electronic format. In fact, with the growing use of digital information around the world, the distribution of copyrighted material represents a serious concern for publishers and authors.
Therefore, to facilitate the evolution towards “media-adaptive multimedia” in the publishing industry, there is a need to access directly from a printed document, additional information, in particular electronic information, while protecting the copyrights related to the distribution and commercialization of this additional information.
It is an object of the present invention to integrate printed objects, digital objects, multimedia objects while respecting the copyrights attached to these objects.
It is another object of the present invention to individually identify, select and retrieve the description and pricing information related to copyrighted edited objects referenced in the context of printed publications and for ordering, receiving and accessing said edited objects from these printed publications.
It is another object of the present invention to preserve the integrity of original printed publications and to avoid errors and mistakes due to the manual capture of codes printed on such publications to access additional copyrighted information.
The present invention provides a method and associated computer program product for processing edited objects associated with a copyrighted physical document, said method for use in a user workstation by a user. The method comprises:
said user workstation determining a position of a point pressed on a touch foil of an opto-touch foil aligned over or under a page of the copyrighted physical document, said page comprising a plurality of items, said point having been pressed to select an item of the plurality of items during illumination of the plurality of items by a light emitting foil of the opto-touch foil, said pressed point aligned proximate to the selected item;
said user workstation identifying the selected item by correlating the determined position of the pressed point with a position of the selected item in a list of item positions recorded in an item position column of an edited objects table that is stored in the user workstation, said list of item positions being associated with the plurality of items on the page of the physical document;
identifying a first edited object in the edited objects table from an association of the first edited object with the selected item identified by said correlating;
ascertaining, from informing text in an edited object path column in the edited objects table, that the user does not have a license to use andlor copy the first edited object; and
after said ascertaining, sending, from the user workstation to the edited objects server, a request for information concerning the first edited object, wherein the request comprises an identification of the physical document, an identification of the page, and an identification of the selected item.
The novel and inventive features believed characteristics of the invention are set forth in the appended claims. The invention itself, however, as well as a preferred mode of use, further objects and advantages thereof, will best be understood by reference to the following detailed description of an illustrative detailed embodiment when read in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, wherein:
The present invention is directed to a method and system for managing the intellectual capital of published documents depending on the different modes of distribution or commercialization. Such documents can be gathered in other published documents. For example, a book can contain chapters and/or notes or pictures which are sold separately. Such sale can be done using e-commerce or e-business sale and distribution systems. From a book exposed in a bookshop or any shop, a customer can separately buy a specific chapter, chart, picture, etc. . . . Such separate document can be paid by whatever means, and can be sent through internet to one or several addresses provided by the customer, for instance:
Generally, the correspondence between external digital documents and physical documents uses techniques based on optical sensing and decoding of digital data where data is visibly encoded (e.g., by means of bar codes), or steganographically encoded on the physical document with techniques similar to these used for embedding watermarks or subliminal calibration patterns. Examples of this kind of systems can be found in the following patents:
U.S. Pat. No. 5,768,426 entitled “Graphics processing system employing embedded code signals” discloses a system where an identification code signal is impressed on a carrier to be identified (such as an electronic data signal or a physical medium) in a manner that permits the identification signal later to be discerned and the carrier thereby identified.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,311,214 entitled “Linking of computers based on optical sensing of digital data” discloses a system where a printed object, such as an item of postal mail, a book, printed advertising, a business card, or a product packaging, is steganographically encoded with plural-bit data. When such an object is presented to an optical sensor, the plural-bit data is decoded and used to establish a link to an internet address corresponding to that object.
Similarly, U.S. Pat. No. 6,408,331 entitled “Computer linking methods using encoded graphics” discloses a system and a method where a data object comprises both a graphic and embedded link information, such as the URL address of a network node, permitting the graphic object to serve as a link usable by an internet browser or the like.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,345,104 entitled “Digital watermarks and methods for security documents” deals with a system where security documents (e.g. passports, currency, event tickets, and the like) are encoded to convey machine-readable multi-bit binary information (e.g., a digital watermark), usually in a manner not alerting human viewers that such information is present. The documents can be provided with overt or subliminal calibration patterns. When a document incorporating such a pattern is scanned (e.g. by a photocopier), the pattern facilitates detection of the encoded information.
A commercial product for embedding a digital watermark in an image, and means of detecting it is the Digimarc® MediaBridge™, described on the web page of Digimarc, at http://www.digimarc.com/dmb/software.htm
The systems and methods described in the herein above references have the common drawback of requiring the use of specialised encoding and printing techniques for embedding codes, patters or watermarks on printed materials. These techniques are not standard in the printing industry. In fact, the requirement consisting in modifying the original documents by printing coded information affects the integrity or even the readability of these documents and represents a fundamental drawback. Moreover, the end user must have a specialised interface such as a digital scanner or an optical sensor to locate, sense and decode embedded information from printed publications using these techniques.
A rather different approach for linking digital objects and printed objects is the DigitalDesk™ from Rank Xerox® EuroPARC, described in several technical documents published by Xerox and available on the web page: http://www.xrce.xerox.com/publis/cam-trs/html/. The idea behind DigitalDesk basically consists in “instead of making the computer act like a desk, make the desk act like a computer.” To that aim, the DigitalDesk is built around an ordinary physical desk. It can be used as such, but it has extra capabilities. A video camera is mounted above the desk, pointing down at the work surface. The output of the camera is connected to a system that can recognize the documents that are placed on the surface of the desk and can detect where the user is pointing (using an LED-tipped pen). The more advanced version comprises a computer-driven projector mounted above the desk enabling electronic objects to be projected onto real paper documents—removing the burden of having to switch attention between screen and paper and allowing additional user-interaction techniques.
A main drawback of this system is the need of the use of bulky, static, non portable interface elements, such as a video camera and a projector over a desk. These elements are not usable on portable, mobile environments.
The present invention avoids the drawbacks of the herein above discussed systems. It provides a solution to associate physical documents with copyrighted digital documents in order to perform transactions while respecting the copyrights attached to these digital documents. Basically, the present invention:
In a preferred embodiment, the system includes:
Each item (i.e., words, pictures, logos, etc. . . . printed on the publication) is linked to one or a plurality of copyrighted edited objects (i.e., chapters, notes, pictures, video or audio elements, hardcopy or softcopy). For identifying and selecting said items, they are automatically illuminated by means of a luminous signal (or light spot) generated by the opto-touch foil. The opto-touch foil operates under the control of the user workstation. Illuminated items are selected by the user by pressing the opto-touch foil. When the user selects an item among all illuminated items, the user workstation receives from the opto-touch foil a signal indicating the position of this selected item. The user workstation identifies and locates referring to an Edited Objects Table, the edited object associated with the position of the selected item.
In a preferred embodiment, the user workstation is connected to the Internet network and comprises a Web Browser application. In a particular embodiment, the opto-touch foil is built by stacking a transparent resistive or capacitive film, of the type commonly used to manufacture touch screens over a transparent organic light emitting device film (TOLED film).
System for Selecting, Ordering, Retrieving, Accessing and Displaying Copyrighted Edited Objects from Physical Documents
As shown in
The physical document (100) can be any kind of publication, for example, a newspaper, a geographic map, a novel book, a text book, a technical book, a commercial catalog or even any other type of publication, comprising items, preferably printed items such as words, phrases, logos, or pictures, related to copyrighted or licensed edited objects, such as publications, CDs (Compact Discs), DVDs (Digital Video Discs), high quality pictures, computer software or any other types of hardcopy of softcopy documents which are sold separately from the physical document or publication.
Opto-Touch Foil
The opto-touch foil (101) comprises two, functionally independent, transparent foils, namely:
http://www.microtouch.com/.
http://www.universaldisplay.com/toled.html.
The combination of both foils (i.e., the touch foil stacked over the light emitting foil) forms an opto-touch foil (1500).
The opto-touch foil (101), (1500) may communicate with the user workstation over an infrared link, a wired connection or any other communication means (e.g. by means of a wireless connection operating in the globally available 2.4 Ghz band of the “Bluetooth” specification, as promoted by the “Bluetooth Special Interest Group” and documented on the Official Bluetooth Website http://www.bluetooth.com/).
User Workstation
The user workstation (103) is used
The Edited Objects server (106) primarily, is the repository where licensed or copyrighted edited objects files, accessible from a plurality of physical documents (or publications), are stored and from where they can be accessed and downloaded by customers for a fee. Also, the Edited Objects server provides the customers with descriptions and ordering information related to edited objects selected from physical documents (or publications).
Method for Selecting, Ordering, Retrieving, Accessing and Displaying Copyrighted Edited Objects from Physical Documents
As shown in
The method comprises the further steps of:
This example shows also the structure of the body section (310) of the Edited Objects Table (300). Basically, with each page (320) of the physical publication (200), is associated a group of entries (330) on the Edited objects Table (300). Each entry of this group corresponds to a different edited object, referenced on the page by a particular printed item. In particular, for each edited object, three fields are defined in the Edited Objects Table, namely:
The information comprised in these fields is used:
to determine the position (311), on the page (320), of each printed item, and to highlight the positions of said printed items by means of the opto-touch foil (201). The opto-touch foil is placed and aligned over or under the identified page of the physical publication (200). Each printed item on the page corresponds to a highlighted position on said opto-touch foil. The opto-touch foil is pressed by the user at a point corresponding to a selected printed item;
c: \170301\115\celtic-gods.html
http://www.virgin.net/?doc=170301&page=115&object=“Modron”including:
http://www.virgin.net/170301/115/modron-info.html
on the Edited Objects server (1008) www.virgin.net. This file is retrieved and displayed (1009) using a browser program installed on the user workstation (1003).
http://www.virgin.net/?&doc=170301&page=115&object=“Modron”&account=5558397&pin=XXXX
identifying:
What has been described is merely illustrative of the application of the principles of the present invention. Other arrangements and methods can be implemented by those skilled in the art without departing from the spirit and scope of the present invention.
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02368109 | Oct 2002 | EP | regional |
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Number | Date | Country | |
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Parent | 10530535 | Apr 2005 | US |
Child | 12537480 | US |