Hardware Specific Product License Validation

• US 20100319072A1
• Filed: 06/11/2009
• Published: 12/16/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 06/11/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Carpenter, Todd L., Abzarian, David
• Granted Patent: US 8,676,714 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 726/31
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/10 Protecting distributed programs or content, e.g. vending or licensing of copyrighted material protection in video systems or pay television H04N7/16 ; Digital rights management [DRM]

Abstract

Server-side validation of hardware specific software product licenses is described herein.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

receiving a request from a computing system for validation of a license of a software product installed thereon, the request being accompanied by a plurality of component descriptors that specify constituent hardware components of the computer system;

determining whether the license is of a type limited to one or more pre-determined license classes;

if the license is of a type limited to one or more pre-determined license classes, comparing the component descriptors to verify that the computing system belongs to the one or more pre-determined license classes;

declining the request for validation if the computing system does not belong to the one or more pre-determined license classes.

2. A method as recited in claim 1, wherein the component descriptors comprise unique component identifiers of the components.

3. A method as recited in claim 1, wherein the component descriptors comprise system identifiers of the computing system.

4. A method as recited in claim 1, wherein the component descriptors comprise unique component identifiers and component class identifiers of the components.

5. A method as recited in claim 1, further comprising receiving a plurality of system identifiers for a plurality of computing devices from a supplier, the plurality of system identifiers specifying the plurality of computing devices and components of each of the plurality of computing systems.

6. A method as recited in claim 5, further comprising categorizing the plurality of system identifiers into the one or more pre-determined license classes based upon the supplier.

7. A method as recited in claim 5, wherein comparing further comprises determining if the one or more pre-determined license classes of the computing devices is the same as the one or more pre-determined license classes of the license.

8. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein comparing further comprising applying a weighting scheme to the components of the computing system to verify that the computing system belongs to the one or more pre-determined license classes.

9. The method as recited in claim 8 further comprising altering the weighting scheme dynamically.

10. A method comprising:

compiling a plurality of computing system descriptors for respectively corresponding computing systems, the computing system descriptor for any particular computing system including a system identifier specifying the computing system and component descriptors that specify constituent hardware components of the particular computing system;

providing the plurality of computing system descriptors to a licensing entity to allow the licensing entity to limit licensing of a software product to the computing systems corresponding to the plurality of computing system descriptors.

11. A method as recited in claim 10, wherein the computing system descriptor for the particular computing system comprises unique component identifiers of the components of the particular computing system.

12. A method as recited in claim 10, wherein providing further comprises computing hashes for at least a portion of the computing system descriptors.

13. A method comprising:

receiving first computing system descriptors for a plurality of computing systems from a supplier of the plurality of computing devices in a first package;

categorizing the plurality of computing devices into a license class by assigning the computing system descriptors to the license class, the class permitted to use a license of a software product;

receiving second computing system descriptors of a computing system from the computing system and the license of the software product installed on the computing system in a second package;

comparing the first and the second package to determine if the second computing system descriptors are the same as a portion of the first computing system descriptors.

14. A method as recited in claim 14, wherein the computing system descriptors comprise unique component identifiers of components of each computing device.

15. A method as recited in claim 14, wherein the computing system descriptors comprise system identifiers of each computing device.

16. A method as recited in claim 14, wherein the computing system descriptors comprise unique component identifiers of components of each computing device and system identifiers of each computing device.

17. The method as recited in claim 14, wherein comparing further comprising applying a weighting scheme to components of the computing system to verify that the computing system belongs to the license class.

18. The method as recited in claim 17 further comprising altering the weighting scheme dynamically.

19. A method as recited in claim 14, wherein receiving first computing system descriptors further comprises receiving hashes for at least a portion of the first computing system descriptors.

20. A method as recited in claim 14, wherein receiving second computing system descriptors further comprises receiving hashes for at least a portion of the second computing system descriptors.