Method of invisibly embedding into a text document the license identification of the generating licensed software

• US 7,475,429 B2
• Filed: 06/04/2002
• Issued: 01/06/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 06/12/2001
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Kyndryl Incorporated
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Carro, Fernando Incertis
• Primary Examiner(s): Moise; Emmanuel L
• Assistant Examiner(s): Pearson; David J
• Application Number:
  US10/479,891
• Publication Number:
  US 20050262034A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,408 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 726/30
• 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]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/6209 to a single file or object, e.g. in a secure envelope, encrypted and accessed using a key, or with access control rules appended to the object itself

Abstract

Method of invisibly embedding into a text document generated by a licensed software the License Identification Signature of the software wherein each original copy of the software has been assigned a unique Software License Code (SLC) and a unique License Identification Key (LIK) by a Licensing Authority, such a method comprising the steps of computing a Document Hash Value (DHV) of the text document (12), getting from the DHV a License Identification Code (LIC) of the text document by using the LUK (14), and embedding (18) invisibly into the text document the License Identification Signature (LIS) formed by the SLC, DHV and LIC after the LIS has been encoded by using character attributes.

Claims

1. A method of embedding into a text document generated by a licensed software a License Identification Signature of the software, the method comprising:

converting all space characters of the text document to identical black space characters consisting of a black color;

after said converting, computing a Document Hash Value (DHV) consisting of a one-way hash of the text document, wherein each original copy of the software has been assigned a unique Software License Code (SLC) and a unique License Identification Key (LIK) by a Licensing Authority;

computing a License Identification Code (LIC) consisting of a cryptographic digest of the DHV by applying a cryptographic hash function to the DHV and using the LIK as a key;

forming a License Identification Signature (LIS) consisting of the SLC, the DHV, and the LIC, said LIS consisting of digits expressed in base 5;

forming an encoded LIS by mapping the digits of the LIS to corresponding character attributes, said encoded LIS consisting of the corresponding character attributes respectively corresponding to the digits of the LIS;

embedding the corresponding character attributes into respective consecutive black space characters starting with the first black space character at the beginning of the text document.