Appeal No. 2002-0617
Application 08/942,743
key material. See pages 7 and 8 of Appellants’ specification.
Appellants disclose that one prior art way of protecting the
private keying material is the use of smart cards. However, the
problem still exists that if the customer’s private keying
material were to become unknowingly compromised then the private
keying material could no longer be used in a meaningful way. See
pages 8 and 9 of Appellants’ specification. Appellants solve
this problem by embedding a challenge means in the protected item
of software. The challenge means has no access to the private
keying material. The response means includes means for providing
to the challenge means that the response means has access to the
private keying material by interacting with the challenge means
using a probabilistic proof scheme, and the challenge means
comprises means for prohibiting a customer from using some or all
the items of software unless the challenge means knows that the
probabilistic proof is successful. See pages 9 and 10 of
Appellants’ specification.
Independent claim 1, present in the application, is
reproduced as follows:
1. A computer system for preventing unauthorized use of
software, comprising:
a protection mechanism for protecting software, the
protection mechanism including challenge means for
2
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