A method for appropriately defining standards for implementing an MPEG-n intellectual property management and protection (IPMP) system introduces IPMP Tool Information located at the beginning of the content stream, and an IPMP Tool management function as a pre-processing module located at the start of the content decoder, and retrieves IPMP Tools based on the IPMP Tool Information. To improve security and enable interoperability between terminals in different IPMP systems, a two-layer security structure and user authentication output format are further defined. Implementation on terminals of different complexity is enabled by further defining different profiles for IPMP Tool retrieval.