Electrical computers and digital processing systems: support – Multiple computer communication using cryptography – Protection at a particular protocol layer
Reexamination Certificate
1999-05-05
2004-02-24
Wright, Norman M. (Department: 2131)
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: support
Multiple computer communication using cryptography
Protection at a particular protocol layer
C705S052000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06697948
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Software or information piracy is the activity of using or making copies of software or information without the authorization of the creator or legitimate owner of that software or information. Piracy is most prevalent in the computer software application industry where people frequently make unlicensed illegal copies of a software application. The application may be copied for personal use or for re-production and commercial profit. Other types of piracy include acts of copying information such as musical recordings or an electronically readable version of documentation or an electronic book. In all cases, piracy costs billions of dollars of lost profits to business annually.
The software and information technology industries have responded to the threat of piracy through the use of locking schemes. Locking schemes can include software locking mechanisms, licenses and specialized hardware devices which prevent unauthorized use of software, information, or an entire electronic device. These schemes seek to prevent adversaries from being able to freely copy software.
There are many types of software locking mechanisms. For example, a manufacturer can encrypt portions of a software program with the unique key. A customer who purchases the software is given the key which allows decryption and execution of the software. An example of such a software protection mechanism is a “Certificate of Authenticity” supplied with the purchase of software programs such as Microsoft Windows 98, manufactured by the Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash. Microsoft and Windows98 are trademarks of the Microsoft Corporation. The Certificate of Authenticity indicates a unique product number. During installation of the software, the product number is requested by the software application and must be entered correctly by the user. If the product number entered matches a number expected by the application, the copy of the application is assumed to be legitimate and is allowed to be installed and executed as normal. If the number entered is incorrect, the software will not install properly.
Hardware piracy protection schemes attach a device to the processor, typically through a communications port. These types of hardware devices are often called “dongles”. An example of a hardware protection scheme is provided in U.S. Pat. No. 3,996,449 which discloses a method for determining if a program or a portion of a program is valid when running on a computer. In this system, a hash function is applied to a users identification code or key along with the text of the program itself in a special tamper-proof hardware checking device. The checking device compares a resulting value from the hash function with a verifier value to see if the program text is correct. If the text is correct, the program is allowed to execute on the device.
Another hardware related approach assigns a unique identifier to each processor that can execute programs. Software programs are then encoded with the identity of a designated processor identifier to which that program is assigned or authorized to execute. No other processor identifications are provided for the software and thus the software will not run on other processors. Obviously, such systems can provide usage limitations when attempting to execute software on a processor with which that software is not specifically associated. The number assignment mechanism may be supervised through the use of an authorization network which can associate a piece of software with a specific processor identification number.
Aside from the electronic hardware and computer software application and data protection mechanisms noted above, little has been done to thwart the piracy of other types of encoded information that is accessed by electronic devices, such as musical recordings.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Characteristics of Prior Art Systems
Prior art techniques for protecting the unauthorized use of software and information suffer from a variety of problems. Systems which use a certificate of authenticity or key suffer in that one key allows unlimited usage of the program and nothing prevents copying of the key. As such, the owner of a copy of the software can pass his key or certificate along with the software or information to someone else who can use the certificate or key to install and run the software or to access the information. If one key allows only a single usage or a one-time execution, the problem of copying may be solved but then each usage requires a separate key to be entered. To be commercially acceptable most programs require multiple uses.
Software locks are also easy to break on personal computers because the owner of the machine has unrestricted privileges and unlimited time to attempt to break locks.
Hardware protection solutions lack flexibility since the hardware designer needs to know the nature of the software to be protected in advance of the production of the hardware device. Furthermore, if different pieces of software using different hardware protection mechanisms are to be run, separate individual hardware devices must be provided. Costs associated with custom hardware production and the fact that consumers have found hardware protection schemes difficult to deal with, prevent widespread deployment of hardware protection mechanisms.
Hardware protection schemes thus limit the flexibility to move software from device to device. Users may not be able to buy software before buying their computational devices, because they do not know the identities of the devices at the time of purchase. Hardware manufacturers may cheat users by giving the same identifier to many machines. Finally, skilled hackers may be able to forge identities of hardware devices by reverse engineering techniques or change software so it fails to check the hardware identifier.
Characteristics of Embodiments of the Invention
The invention overcomes these and other problems. The invention provides methods and apparatus to enable owners or vendors or distributors, each of whom will be hereinafter referred to as a vendor, of software to protect their intellectual property and other rights in that software. Software is defined hereinafter in a broad sense to include such things as computer programs, text, data, databases, audio, video, images, or any other information capable of being represented digitally or as a signal, said software being accessed by or used by users on devices (hereinafter referred to as user devices or devices) such as computers or special purpose devices. The invention also enables vendors of software to charge on a pay per-use basis for an instance of software.
Specifically, the invention provides a system methods and apparatus for supervising usage of software on a user's device and for a monitoring regime that prevents a device from employing any instance of software in a manner not authorized by the legitimate vendor or owner of the rights to that software.
A vendor's rights in a particular software may be infringed upon in a number of ways, including but not limited to the following. A user may make copies of a vendor's software purchased by him and give them to other users who install the software on their devices, when this is not allowed under the first user's terms of purchase of the software. An organization purchases or rents a vendor's software and is allowed to make and use a specified number of copies of the software and then exceeds that specified number. A pirating vendor makes illegal copies of a legitimate vendor's software and sells these copies. A pirating vendor modifies a legitimate vendor's software, for example recompiling an application program or renaming and otherwise changing a song, and distributes and sells copies of the infringing software.
The invention achieves the above mentioned protection of legitimate vendor's rights in software and prevents any infringement of these rights by users, without resorting to encryption of instances or parts of instances of software and requiring th
Rabin Michael O.
Shasha Dennis E.
Hamilton Brook Smith & Reynolds P.C.
Wright Norman M.
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