US 8,621,066 B2Granted

Apparatus for tracking the distribution of media content

AssigneeAT&T Intellectual Property I, L.P.

InventorsKermit Hal Purdy, Brian Amento, Larry Stead, Alicia Abella, Eric Cheung, Mukesh Nathan, Luis Zaman, Ramon Caceres

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Abstract

A system that incorporates teachings of the present disclosure may include, for example, a recipient client device having a controller operable to receive and store a media object from an originating device, track locations where the media object has been since the media object has been stored in the recipient client device, track identifiers associated with a device or a user that has accessed the media object at the locations, and track and store annotations about the media object by the device or the user that accessed the media object. Other embodiments are disclosed.

Claims10

Dependent claims

A server, comprising:

a memory comprising computer instructions;
and
a controller coupled to the memory, wherein when the computer instructions are executed by the controller, the controller performs operations comprising:
receiving media content from an originating device;
transmitting tracking software and the media content to a recipient device requesting the media content, wherein the tracking software comprises computer instructions for storage in a first computer-readable storage medium of the recipient device for execution by a first processor of the recipient device;
transmitting the tracking software to the originating device, wherein the tracking software comprises computer instructions for storage in a second computer-readable storage medium of the originating device for execution by a second processor of the originating device;
tracking, according to first tracking information supplied by at least one of the originating device and the recipient device, locations where the media content has been distributed to at least one other device by at least one of the originating device and the recipient device;
tracking, according to tracking information supplied by at least one of the other devices, locations where the media content has been distributed to yet other devices;
tracking, according to at least one of the first or the second tracking information supplied by at least one of the foregoing devices annotations about the media content;
and
tracking a travel path of the media content by obtaining geolocation information from the foregoing devices.

8 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.