Digital Rights Management and E-Commerce Transactions: Online Rights Clearance

Abstract

This chapter investigates intellectual property rights clearance of as part of e-commerce. Rights clearance is viewed as another online transaction that introduces certain technological and organizational challenges. An overview of the current intellectual property rights legislation is used to describe the setting in which business models and digital rights management systems are called to perform safe and fair electronic trade of goods. The chapter focuses on the technological aspects of the arising issues and investigates the potentials of using advanced information technology solutions for facilitating online rights clearance. A case study that presents a working online rights clearance and protection system is used to validate the applicability of the proposed approaches.