Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Wen-Pin Scott Hsu

Brian Stuart Perlman

Richard Scott Eizenhoefer

Ning Zhang

Tarik Soulami

Mark Zagorski

Wei Jiang

Caglar Gunyakti

Satish Kumar Shetty

Michelle Lynn Holtmann

Thomas J Layson

Anil Bazaz

Wen Wha Lee

Qiong Tang

Josue L Noriega De La Vega

Mark Zhang

A software licensing Application Programming Interface (API) that allows software products to use the license management functionality of a common service. A license specifies rights in a software product. The software product calls a consume method on the API in order to consume a right. If the right exists, the service binds the right to the license in which the right is found. The software product enforces the terms of the license by granting, or denying, access to some or all features depending on whether a valid instance of the right is found. Arbitrary data can be associated with a right. The API includes a method to retrieve data from a right that has been previously bound by the consume method.

Programming interface for licensing

Techniques are described for ensuring data integrity and authentication of received messages. One technique includes sending a request from a first module to a second module in which the request includes a first portion that is a shared secret encrypted with a public key, obtaining by the second module a private key from a secure and trusted information store, such as a license information store, including license information or other application specific information for the first module, using the private key to decrypt the first portion and obtain the shared secret, sending a response from the second module to the first module in which the response includes authentication data and at least one data item used with the shared secret to determine the authentication data, and performing by the first module verification processing to verify the authentication data included in the response.

Techniques for ensuring authentication and integrity of communications

A system grants 'provisional privileges' to a user request for the purpose of provisionally performing a requested transaction. If the provisionally-performed transaction does not put the system in a degraded state, the transaction is authorized despite the user request having inadequate privileges originally.

Provisional administrator privileges

A software license for a particular version of a software product on a computing device includes both a branding identifier that identifies the particular version of the software product and component dependency information that identifies one or more aspects of the particular version of the software product. To activate a software product on the computing device, the branding identifier is compared to a portion of the software product on the computing device. If the branding identifier matches the portion of the software product, then the component dependency information is compared to one or more aspects of the software product on the computing device. If the component dependency information matches the one or more aspects of the software product then the software product is activated. Otherwise, the a license state of the software product is kept unchanged.

Version-based software product activation

Licensing aspects of vendor software packages can be protected with reduced user interaction and effort by automating licensing exploit identification, and if allowed, exploit correction. Automating licensing exploit detection ensures that known exploits are more quickly and efficiently discovered to help maintain genuine software status. Minimizing user interaction in licensing exploit detection and correction involves less disruption to users and generally supports increased user satisfaction with vendor software package usage.

Software anti-piracy protection

A plurality of digital licenses correspond to a piece of content, including a base license and at least one add-on license. Each add-on license includes a reference to the base license, and each of the base license and each add-on license sets forth rules specifying how the content may be employed. Each add-on license is identified by way of the reference therein to the base license, and the rules in the base license and in each identified add-on license are aggregated into an aggregated set of rules that is evaluated to determine if such aggregated set of rules allows employing the content in a particular manner.

Growing community of inventors

Redmond, WA, United States of America

Wen-Pin Scott Hsu