Trusted infrastructure support systems, methods and techniques for secure electronic commerce, electronic transactions, commerce process control and automation, distributed computing, and rights management

Abstract

The present inventions provide an integrated, modular array of administrative and support services for electronic commerce and electronic rights and transaction management. These administrative and support services supply a secure foundation for conducting financial management, rights management, certificate authority, rules clearing, usage clearing, secure directory services, and other transaction related capabilities functioning over a vast electronic network such as the Internet and / or over organization internal Intranets. These administrative and support services can be adapted to the specific needs of electronic commerce value chains. Electronic commerce participants can use these administrative and support services to support their interests, and can shape and reuse these services in response to competitive business realities. A Distributed Commerce Utility having a secure, programmable, distributed architecture provides administrative and support services. The Distributed Commerce Utility makes optimally efficient use of commerce administration resources, and can scale in a practical fashion to accommodate the demands of electronic commerce growth. The Distributed Commerce Utility may comprise a number of Commerce Utility Systems. These Commerce Utility Systems provide a web of infrastructure support available to, and reusable by, the entire electronic community and / or many or all of its participants. Different support functions can be collected together in hierarchical and / or in networked relationships to suit various business models and / or other objectives. Modular support functions can combined in different arrays to form different Commerce Utility Systems for different design implementations and purposes. These Commerce Utility Systems can be distributed across a large number of electronic appliances with varying degrees of distribution.

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION [0001] This is a continuation of application Ser. No. 09 / 398,665, filed Sep. 17, 1999, which is a continuation of application Ser. No. 08 / 699,712, filed Aug. 12, 1996, now abandoned, which is a continuation-in-part of application Ser. No. 08 / 388,107, filed Feb. 13, 1995, entitled “SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR SECURE TRANSACTION MANAGEMENT AND ELECTRONIC RIGHTS PROTECTION” (hereafter “Ginter et al.”), now abandoned, all of which are incorporated herein by reference.FIELD OF THE INVENTIONS [0002] These inventions generally relate to optimally bringing the efficiencies of modern computing and networking to the administration and support of electronic interactions and consequences and further relate to a secure architecture enabling distributed, trusted administration for electronic commerce. [0003] These inventions relate, in more detail, to a “Distributed Commerce Utility”—a foundation for the administration and support of electronic commerce and othe...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0063] The present inventions provide a “Distributed Commerce Utility” having a secure, programmable, distributed architecture that provides administrative and support services. The Distributed Commerce Utility can make optimally efficient use of commerce administration resources, and can scale in a practical fashion to accommodate the demands of electronic commerce growth.

[0150] This ability to distribute, and, if desired to subsequently adapt (modify), any support service functions to any desired degree across a system or network provides great power, flexibility and increases in efficiency. For example, distributing aspects of support services such as clearing functions will help avoid the “bottlenecks” that a centralized clearing facility would create if it had insufficient capacity to handle the processing loads. Taking advantage of the distributed processing power of many value chain participant appliances also has great benefits in terms of improved effectiveness and system response time, much lower overhead of operation, greater fault tolerance, versatility in application implementations, and, in general much greater value chain appeal resulting from the present inventions adaptability to each value chain participant's needs and requirements. Some Examples of Administrative and / or Support Services Provided by the Distributed Commerce Utility

Problems solved by technology

They badly need reliable, secure, trusted support and administrative services.

Such techniques, systems and arrangements bring about an unparalleled degree of security, reliability, efficiency and flexibility to electronic commerce and electronic rights management.

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