Importance

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Abstract

A method and apparatus are provided for automatic patching of a sparsely streamed application, such as a game application. The invention enables an initial file set to be streamed to a client's network device. The file set is used to generate file segments. A patcher is then authorized to write to sections of the file segment, regardless of whether they have received portions of the streamed application. Once a section of the file segment has been written to by the patcher, that section becomes an authoritative region, which indicates that the streaming process may not write to it again. This authoritative region represents a last-known good image for that section of the file. This approach may be applied over an arbitrary number of patches, with authoritative sections growing, coalescing, or truncating as appropriate.

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First Claim