Digital product execution control and security

Details Digital product execution control and security Digital product execution control and security

1997-04-11

2001-08-07

Barron, Jr., Gilberto (Department: 2131)

Electrical computers and digital processing systems: support

Data processing protection using cryptography

C713S190000, C705S057000

Reexamination Certificate

active

06272636

ABSTRACT:

FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates generally to product production and distribution, and particularly to digital product production and distribution including distribution of digital products in an execution controlled form.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Digital products, e.g., computer software and data, have been published widely through a variety of methods and mediums. Publishers have sold and distributed digital products like other products, e.g., packaged and available at retail outlets or through catalog and mail-order delivery. The nature of digital products, however, lends itself to non-traditional methods of distribution. Because common devices, e.g., personal computers and modems, duplicate digital material without degradation, consumers can copy and distribute reliably most digital products. Examples include shareware and distribution by modem via computer bulletin boards or the well-known Internet global communication medium. A second popular digital product distribution mechanism is CD-ROM, a relatively inexpensive medium having vast storage capacity, allowing publishers to distribute on a single disk a large volume of digital material including supporting documentation and manuals.
Such methods of broad distribution attract both publishers and end-users of digital products. Widespread distribution of fully functional digital products occurs accurately and without significant cost to the publisher. End-users access a variety of products for comparison with opportunity to actually try each product before making a decision to purchase. In essence, the end-user receives the fully functional digital product as an offer to purchase based on an opportunity to fully evaluate the actual product. The publisher profits when the evaluation process yields sufficient purchasers. This “try-before-you-buy” distribution mechanism is especially attractive in the context of global communication networks such the Internet where distribution occurs globally at minimal cost and where an enormous number of potential purchasers of digital products interact.
Unfortunately, the ability to accurately copy and make use of digital products lends itself to unauthorized use of digital products by unauthorized users. For example, persons using the digital product fully and indefinitely beyond an initial evaluation period take value from the publisher. Digital products may be easily reproduced and the publisher can take advantage of this characteristic as a distribution mechanism, however, the publisher risks unauthorized use and lost sales under such a distribution mechanism without some form of control over product execution. The digital product publisher taking advantage of such broad distribution schemes must implement some form of control to prevent unauthorized use of the digital product while still making the product widely available for consumer-evaluation.
Early attempts to control use of published digital products included distribution of an “evaluation” copy of a digital product. The evaluation copy, “diminished” relative to the actual product, introduced the consumer to the product, but wouldn't allow or even include code supporting fully functional use. To produce the evaluation copy, the product author, e.g., programmer, would rewrite the product in an alternate, i.e., less functional, form. In such product re-design process, difficult issues arose with respect to the degree of inoperability established relative to the fully operational form of the product. Furthermore, a consumer wishing to purchase the product following trial use of the evaluation copy had to obtain a fully functional version through traditional, e.g., retail, distribution mechanisms.
A second, but only slightly more successful, approach contemplated distribution of a “crippled” form of the fully functional product. Distribution material would include a fully functional digital product, but also safeguards incorporated into the product to prevent fully functional use until authorization, i.e., purchase, occurred. For example, a word processing program could not, in its crippled form, print a document or save a document to disk. When, following an evaluation period, the user decided to purchase the product, a purchase procedure “de-crippled” the product for fully functional use. For example, the purchaser received a “key”, i.e., a predetermined coded value, required to convert the crippled form of the product to a truly fully functional form. The consumer need not physically obtain a new copy of the product at the time of purchase.
Unfortunately, users demand a truly fully functional form of the product during the evaluation period. To meet such user demand, providers of digital content now distribute a fully functional form of the digital product for evaluation, yet control in some manner the use of the product to prevent unauthorized use, i.e., prevent use beyond an allowed trial evaluation.
A “metering” mechanism used in association with a published “try before you buy” digital product places a limitation on a potential purchaser's use of the digital product. A metering mechanism is required for distribution of a fully functional version of a digital product. Otherwise, the potential purchaser has no reason to become an actual purchaser. A metering limitation might include a time period of allowed use followed by a purchase requirement for continued use. Another common metering limitation is a limited number of uses, e.g., limited number of executions, followed by a purchase requirement for continued use. Important to note, during evaluation the potential purchaser has full use of the product.
Unfortunately, converting a fully functional digital product to a metered form for distribution introduces not only a new and significant production step, but also introduces an opportunity to create flaws or “bugs” in the product. This also tends to introduce complexity into the published product not related to operation of the product itself as designed by the software developer, but complexity as related to implementation of a reliable metering function.
As digital products evolve, especially computer program products, overall size and complexity increase. Software developers hesitate to implement quick solutions for known problems, fearing introduction of yet additional problems. A particular condition or “bug” sometimes requires many specific ordered steps to manifest itself. Software developers use sophisticated software testing scripts providing repeatable recursion testing for past or known “bugs” to insure the quality of the latest version of a given program. Developers endeavor to minimize the resource usage of their products and to keep the size of the programs as small as possible. This can be an especially sensitive problem if the proposed growth of a product requires an increase in the number or type of distribution medium, e.g., adding an additional diskette to a software product is considered a costly requirement.
The need to produce a fully functional demonstration version of a product, i.e., a “try before you buy” version of a product, normally introduces a higher order magnitude of difficulty. Creating a “crippled” version of the full-functioning product and/or controlling usage and maintaining version control of both the crippled version and the non-crippled version is a daunting task, not to mention the need to execute elaborate, e.g., recursion, testing of both versions of the product. In essence, the manufacturer must provide two products instead of one, i.e., doubles the product inventory and associated testing and product management.
Most solutions for such problems faced by software developers require extensive involvement of software programmers, quality control labs, version/source control managers and, most importantly, time. Any “automated” solution to metering or to execution control usually requires the original software programmers to reprogram their final product to utilize the “automated” solution. The “automated” solution is usually in the form of additional

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