Method and Apparatus for Protecting Information and Privacy

• US 20080282086A1
• Filed: 06/20/2008
• Published: 11/13/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 05/02/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: RPX Corporation
• Original Assignee: ShieldIP, Inc.
• Inventors: Caceres, Ramon, Molnar, David, Karia, Timir, Beinart, Yossi, Shasha, Dennis E., Rolinson, Sean, Rabin, Michael O.
• Granted Patent: US 7,991,995 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 713/161
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/1077 Recurrent authorisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/6254 by anonymising data, e.g. decorrelating personal data from the owner's identification
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/725 operating on a secure reference time value
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/367 involving electronic purses or money safes

Abstract

A system for protecting software against piracy while protecting a user'"'"'s privacy enables enhancements to the protection software in a user device and extended protections against piracy. The protection system allows the user device to postpone validation of purchased tags stored in a tag table for installed software and to re-establish ownership of a tag table to recover from invalidation of a tag table identifier value resulting from revelation of a tag table identifier value. Continued use of the tag table is provided by the use of credits associated with a tag table. A protection center is protected against denial of service attacks by making calls to the protection center cost time or money to the attackers.

Claims

1. A method used by a protection center of sending protection information to a class of user devices having common properties comprising the step of:

signing a message including said protection information to be sent, the common properties, and an expiration time for said protection information;

sending the signed protection information from a protection center to a class of user devices;

verifying the signed protection information using a verification key; and

receiving said signed message by a supervising program on each user device;

at each user device, using the protection information to detect and prevent infringing use of protected software by verifying, using the supervising program, that the message has been signed by said protection center using a verification key on said user device, that said common properties correspond to one of a set of actual properties of the user device and a set of properties listed in the supervising program, and that the expiration time is greater than a current time;

upon successful verification, accepting the message by the user device.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising the steps of:

sending said signed message to user devices; and

downloading said signed message by one of the user devices from one of said other user devices.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein the step of sending sends to at least one storage device and the step of downloading downloads from the at least one storage device.

4. A system used by a protection center of sending protection information to a class of user devices having common properties comprising:

means for signing a message including said protection information to be sent, the common properties, and an expiration time for said protection information;

means for sending the signed protection information from a protection center to a class of user devices;

means for verifying the signed protection information using a verification key; and

means for receiving said signed message by a supervising program on each user device;

at each user device, means for using the protection information to detect and prevent infringing use of protected software by verifying, using the supervising program, that the message has been signed by said protection center using a verification key on said user device, that said common properties correspond to one of a set of actual properties of the user device and a set of properties listed in the supervising program, and that the expiration time is greater than a current time;

upon successful verification, accepting the message by the user device.