A system and method for media content management include creating, via a digital vault, a container file comprising media content submitted by a user and content metadata; verifying, via the digital vault, a completeness of the content metadata associated with the media content in the container file; classifying, via the digital vault, the container file based on the completeness of the media content; and capturing, via the digital vault, event metadata when a second user gains access to the container file, the event metadata comprising identification of the second user, an activation timestamp, a duration of access, portions of the container file accessed, and changes to the container file.

In addition to an update license related to a contract period of an application, a license server issues an installation license for configuring the application and an extension installation license. When an image forming apparatus has received the installation license from the license server, the application can be used as long as the current date is within a usage period for carrying out the configuration task. If the current date is past that period, a license is acquired from the license server. The acquired license is an update license in the case where the update license is valid, and is an extension installation license in other cases.

The present invention includes embodiments of systems and methods for addressing the interdependencies that result from integrating the computing resources of multiple hardware and software providers. The integrated, multi-provider cloud-based platform of the present invention employs abstraction layers for communicating with and integrating the resources of multiple back-end hardware providers, multiple software providers and multiple license servers. These abstraction layers and associated functionality free users not only from having to implement and configure provider-specific protocols, but also from having to address interdependencies among selected hardware, software and license servers on a job-level basis or at other levels of granularity.

Described herein are techniques for a system to track usage of a software application on a remote device, without having connectivity to the remote device. The system transmits an activation token to a computing device different from the remote device to activate the software application, and receives a deactivation token generated by the remote device from the computing device when the software application is deactivated. The system uses transmission of an activation token and receipt of a deactivation token as indicators of start and end times of use of the software application. For example, the system uses the indicated start and end times to determine a billing period for use of the software application.

A system and method for media content management include creating, via a digital vault, a container file comprising media content submitted by a user and content metadata; verifying, via the digital vault, a completeness of the content metadata associated with the media content in the container file; classifying, via the digital vault, the container file based on the completeness of the media content; identifying a salable content item that is to be put up for sale; creating, via the digital vault, a nonfungible token (NFT) container file and populating the NFT container file with the salable content item and NFT metadata; offering the specified ownership rights to the salable content item for sale via an NFT transaction; and updating the NFT container file to reflect a new owner of the ownership rights to the salable content after sale of the salable content item.

A licensing system and related methods are described utilizing aspects of distributed ledger technologies to facilitate trusted and verifiable licensing transactions for creative works. A client device can include an asset editing tool for incorporating an asset selected from a plurality of licensable assets into a new creative work. The selected asset can be downloaded for incorporation into the new creative work. The new creative work incorporating the selected asset can be analyzed to determine an amount that the selected asset contributed to the new creative work, or an amount that the new creative work is attributable to the selected asset. Based on the analysis, a smart contract associated with the new creative work can be generated to include license fees for licensing the new creative work, receive payment transactions for licensing the new creative work, and fairly disperse calculated portions of received payment transactions to a licensor of the new creative work and to another licensor of the incorporated selected asset.

Techniques for managing customer license agreements are described. In one embodiment, a user-specified resource metric of a license model and a user-specified limit of the user-specified resource metric are obtained. A request for permission to launch a new compute resource at a computing device of the provider network is obtained from a service within a provider network. The new compute resource having a property that is an amount of the user-specified metric. A determination is made that a launch of the new compute resource would cause the user-specified limit to be exceeded, and the request the request to launch the new compute resource is denied.

The present invention includes embodiments of systems and methods for addressing the interdependencies that result from integrating the computing resources of multiple hardware and software providers. The integrated, multi-provider cloud-based platform of the present invention employs abstraction layers for communicating with and integrating the resources of multiple back-end hardware providers, multiple software providers and multiple license servers. These abstraction layers and associated functionality free users not only from having to implement and configure provider-specific protocols, but also from having to address interdependencies among selected hardware, software and license servers on a job-level basis or at other levels of granularity.

When a license management server according to the present exemplary embodiment receives a request for changing a license of a first version to a license of a second version from a license operation server that leases a license to a client, the license management server changes an expiration date of the license of the first version to a predetermined period of time later, and issues the license of the second version. Then, the license of the first version of which expiration date has been changed to the predetermined period of time later and the issued license of the second version are transmitted to the license operation server.

The invention relates to a method for automatically licensing service features during the upgrade of a first communication system (11) into a second communication system (12), said method having the following steps: (a) extracting the service features to be licensed from a database, (b) transmitting the service features to be licensed to a License Server (CLS), (c) generating a license file (LF) in the License server (CLS), (d) transmitting the license file (LF) to the second communication system (12), and (e) installing the license file (LF) in the second communication system (12). This invention also relates to a corresponding computer program and corresponding licensing system.