US 7,072,861 B1Granted

Digital content downloading system using networks

AssigneeMitsubishi Denki Kabushiki Kaisha

InventorsHideaki Yamanaka, Teruhiko Moriyama, Katsuaki Kikuchi

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Abstract

In cases where a consumer desires to receive digital content from a digital content retailer through a network, information designating the digital content and a digital content transmission condition such as a transfer rate and a transmission time-zone are sent to the digital content retailer through the network. The digital content retailer reserves the transfer rate and the transmission time-zone in the network and downloads the digital content to the consumer through the network at the digital content transmission condition according to the reservation. After the downloading of the digital content is completed, the consumer pays a charge for the digital content itself and a transmission charge corresponding to the digital content transmission condition to a credit company, the credit company pays the charges to the digital content retailer, and the digital content retailer pays the transmission charge to a network operator managing the network. Therefore, the consumer can specify a time condition like the transmission time-zone for the downloading of the digital content. Also, because it is not required that the consumer directly pays the transmission charge to the network operator, the payment of the consumer can be efficiently performed.

Claims14

Dependent claims

A digital content downloading method using a network in which digital content is downloaded, comprising the steps of:

receiving through a network information designating a desired digital content selected by a consumer terminal and a desired digital content transmission condition related to quality of communication selected by the consumer terminal, at a digital content retailer computer system possessing the desired digital content;
sending a request from the digital content retailer computer system to a resource reservation server of a network operator computer system, for a reservation for the network managed by the network operator computer system according to the desired digital content transmission condition sent from the consumer terminal;
providing from the digital content retailer computer system the desired digital content designated by the information, to the consumer terminal through the network reserved by the digital content retailer computer system at the desired digital content transmission condition sent from the consumer terminal;
collecting from the consumer terminal, by the digital content retailer computer system, a charge for the desired digital content, the charge including a transmission charge corresponding to the desired digital content transmission condition;
and
paying, by the digital content retailer computer system, the transmission charge to the network operator computer system.

3 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.