Patent 7043473 was granted and assigned to Widevine Technologies on May, 2006 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A method for identifying a media file transmitted over a network includes creating a plurality of known media file identifiers, each for a respective one of a plurality of known media files, using an identifier generating algorithm, storing the known media file identifiers in a database, creating a media file identifier for an unknown media file with the identifier generating algorithm and comparing the media file identifier for the unknown media file with known media file identifiers in order to produce an identification of the unknown media file.