Electronic IPR ( elPR ) Management Technologies

The progresses over the last few years of digital technologies, the rapid development of the Internet and of other colnmunication means, have caused an ever increasing need for protecting Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs). The problem of the IPR protection for multimedia works exchanged through telematic networks have promoted industrial and research projects for the development of Electronic Copyright Management Systems (ECMSs), i.e. systems able to manage automatically all the issues related to trading works through telematic means by protecting their IPR. The goal of this paper is to exploit the main requirements that such systems should satisfy, the players that should be involved and the technologies that will be most probably employed.