Methods and apparatus for protecting information

• US 6,697,948 B1
• Filed: 05/05/1999
• Issued: 02/24/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 05/05/1999
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: RPX Corporation
• Original Assignee: Dennis E. Shasha, Michael O. Rabin
• Inventors: Rabin, Michael O., Shasha, Dennis E.
• Primary Examiner(s): Wright, Norman M.
• Application Number:
  US09/305,572
• Time in Patent Office: 1,756 Days
• Field of Search: 713/201, 713/200, 705/52
• US Class Current: 726/30
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/1064 Restricting content processing at operating system level
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/1077 Recurrent authorisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/1078 Logging; Metering
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/16 Program or content traceability, e.g. by watermarking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2211/008 Public Key, Asymmetric Key, Asymmetric Encryption
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2221/2103 Challenge-response
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2221/2135 Metering
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2221/2151 Time stamp

Abstract

A system, method, or apparatus for enabling owners and vendors of software products to protect the property rights of their software. The system and method utilizes a unique vendor tag system for each instant of a specific software product. This system interacts with a monitoring program, which, is running on the user'"'"'s device to ensure that no unauthorized use takes place.

Claims

1. A system for supervising usage of software comprising:

a software vendor producing instances of software;

a tag server producing a plurality of tags, one tag per instance of software, each tag uniquely identifying an instance of software with which it is associated; and

a user device receiving and installing an instance of software and securely receiving a tag, the tag being uniquely associated with that instance of software and unrelated to the user device, the user device including a supervising program which detects attempts to use the instance of software and which verifies the authenticity of the tag associated with the instance of software before allowing use of the instance of software.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the supervising program on the user device verifies the authenticity of the tag and maintains the tag in a tag table and maintains the instance of software if the tag is authentic and rejects the instance of software if the tag associated with the software is not authentic.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the supervising program verifies a hash function value in the tag to determine if the tag is authentic and is properly associated with the instance of software.

4. The system of claim 2 wherein the tag is digitally signed and the supervising program verifies the authenticity of the tag by verifying a digital signature of the tag.

5. The system of claim 1 wherein each of the plurality of tags created by the tag server comprises at least one of a name of software, a unique number of an instance of software and a hash function value on portions of an instance of software.

6. The system of claim 5 wherein the unique number of the instance of software is selected from a sparse set of numbers.

7. The system of claim 5 wherein each tag further comprises a unique identifier of the supervising program.

8. The system of claim 7 wherein the supervising program verifies that the unique identifier of the supervising program in a tag is the same as an identifier of the supervising program on the user device.

9. A system for supervising usage of software comprising:

a software vendor producing instances of software;

a tag server producing a plurality of tags, one tag per instance of software, each tag uniquely identifying an instance of software with which it is associated, each tag is associated with at least one fingerprint computed on portions of the instance of software associated with the tag; and

a user device receiving and installing an instance of software and securely receiving a tag being uniquely associated with that instance of software, the user device including a supervising program which detects attempts to use the instance of software and which verifies the authenticity of the tag associated with the instance of software before allowing use of the instance of software.

10. The system of claim 9 wherein the supervising program verifies that the software instance associated with a tag satisfies a same location fingerprint check against the at least one fingerprint included in the tag associated with the instance of software.

11. The system of claim 10 wherein the same location fingerprint check is performed by the supervising program at least one time of before, during, and after use of the instance of software.

12. The system of claim 9 wherein each tag further includes at least one list of locations containing values from which the at least one fingerprint is computed and the supervising program verifies that the software instance associated with each tag satisfies a same location fingerprint check against the at least one fingerprint associated with the software at locations specified in the at least one list of locations.

13. A system for supervising usage of software comprising:

a software vendor producing instances of software;

a tag server producing a plurality of tags, one tag per instance of software, each tag uniquely identifying an instance of software with which it is associated; and

a user device receiving and installing an instance of software and securely receiving a tag uniquely associated with that instance of software, the user device including a supervising program which detects attempts to use the instance of software and which verifies the authenticity of the tag associated with the instance of software before allowing use of the instance of software, and whenever any data file is accessed by the instance of software, information associated with the instance of software performing the access i stored in a location associated with the data file.

14. The system of claim 13 wherein the information associated with the instance of software is the tag associated with the instance of software.

15. The system of claim 13 wherein the information associated with the instance of software is the time of modification performed by the instance of software.

16. The system of claim 13 wherein the information associated with the instance of software performing the access is written to a secure location which the supervising program alone can access.

17. The system of claim 16 wherein the supervising program verifies that when an instance of the software attempts to access a data file having associated information stored in the location associated with that data file, the supervising program verifies that the associated information stored is information associated with the instance of software currently attempting access.

18. The system of claim 16, wherein the supervising program uses an unaliasable hash function to verify the associated information stored in the location associated with the data file for which access is currently being attempted.