Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Bradley J Graziadio

Pradyumna K Misra

John E Parsons

Terence R Spies

Oshoma Momoh

A software licensing system includes a license generator located at a licensing clearinghouse and at least one license server and multiple clients located at a company or entity. When a company wants a software license, it sends a purchase request (and appropriate fee) to the licensing clearinghouse. The license generator at the clearinghouse creates a license pack containing a set of one or more individual software licenses. To prevent the license pack from being copied and installed on multiple license servers, the license generator assigns a unique license pack ID to the license pack and associates the license pack ID with the particular license server in a master license database kept at the licensing clearinghouse. The license generator digitally signs the license pack and encrypts it with the license server's public key. The license server is responsible for distributing the software licenses from the license pack to individual clients. When a client needs a license, the license server determines the client's operating system platform and grants the appropriate license. To prevent an issued license from being copied from one client machine to another, the software license is assigned to a specific client by including a client ID within the license. The software license also has a license ID that is associated with the client ID in a database record kept at the license server. The license server digitally signs the software license and encrypts it using the client's public key. The license is stored locally at the client.

System and method for software licensing

A server operating system supports multiple client-server sessions and enables a user to begin a session and later dynamically reconnect to that session even if the user uses two different client computers. The operating system has a multi-user session manager to enable multiple client-server sessions on the server and a multi-user stack protocol manager to manage one or more protocol stacks used in communicating with the clients. When a user connects to the server via a first client, the stack protocol manager assigns a first protocol stack to this first client-server connection and the session manager creates a first session for the user. When the user subsequently reconnects to the server using a second client that is different from the first client, the stack manager assigns a second protocol stack to a second client-server connection and the session begins creating a second session for the user. During this latter process, however, the session manager recognizes that the user is affiliated with the first session. The session manager adapts the first session to conform to the system configuration of the second client. The session manager then reassociates the second protocol stack with the reconfigured first session so that the user is returned to his/her original session, even though they logged on from a different client.

Maintaining a first session on a first computing device and subsequently connecting to the first session via different computing devices and adapting the first session to conform to the different computing devices system configurations

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Redmond, WA, United States of America

Bradley J Graziadio