Wow, this is crazy. Basically covers nearly any way of phoning home to see if someone is a licensed user, so long as you provide updated license data (whatever

Wow, this is crazy. Basically covers nearly any way of phoning home to see if someone is a licensed user, so long as you provide updated license data (whatever that means). Look at claim #1: > A system for preventing unauthorized access to electronic data on an electronic device, the system comprising: a portable licensing medium configured to communicate with the electronic device and to store license data, the license data configured to be used by the electronic device to determine whether to allow access to the electronic data; and a registration authority configured to communicate with the electronic device, the registration authority having verification data for verifying the license data stored on the licensing medium, wherein the registration authority provides updated license data for the licensing medium. So an infringing device must contain all of the following: a 'portable' licensing medium (dependent claims 20 & 23-26 make it clear that anything from CDs to RAM qualify for that medium; though RAM is really stretching the "portable" requirement) which stores license data, it must use the license data on there to decide whether or not you can access the data, there must be a registration authority that communicates with the device, that authority must have verification data that allows it to verify the data from the client device, and the authority must provide updated license data. Funny thing is that I can find a lot, if not all, of the elements in a computer virus from 1986. I wonder if they mentioned it as prior art? :) http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110127/23533212868/one-earliest-computer-viruses-was-really-drm-gone-wrong.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110127/23533212868/one-ea... Problem is this patent was filed in Feb 26, 2001, and there wasn't as much phoning-home to licensing servers/updating license data done back then, though I'd imagine someone can find something.