Software Licensing API Standardizes License Management
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing software licensing systems require each software vendor to develop and maintain their own infrastructure for managing licenses, leading to duplication of effort and inefficiency, as they need to enforce electronic licenses within their software products.
Innovation Solution
A standardized software licensing Application Programming Interface (API) that provides common licensing functions, allowing software products to manage licenses, validate their existence, and enforce usage rights, without defining what actions to take upon license constraints, thereby enabling vendors to decide how to utilize the licensing infrastructure.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If each software vendor develops and incorporates its own licensing infrastructure into software, then electronic license enforcement capability is achieved, but development effort and system complexity are wasted through duplication
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates a universal licensing service that can be shared across multiple software products. The service includes a licensing component that performs license management functions (obtaining, storing, protecting, evaluating licenses) and an API that exposes these functions to various software products, eliminating the need for each vendor to develop their own infrastructure.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent merges the licensing infrastructure into a separate, shared service that multiple software products can utilize. Instead of embedding licensing code within each software product, the licensing functions are combined into a common service that communicates with software products through a standardized API interface.
2Adaptability or versatility
If each software vendor develops and maintains its own licensing infrastructure, then software can independently manage licenses, but duplication of effort occurs across multiple products
Solution Approach 1:
The licensing service provides universal license management functionality that can serve multiple software products simultaneously. The service maintains independence and adaptability through its API interface, allowing each software product to interact with the licensing service according to its specific needs while sharing the underlying infrastructure.
Solution Approach 2:
The API acts as an intermediary between software products and the licensing service. It provides a standardized interface that allows software products to communicate license management requests to the service while maintaining independence in how they interact with the licensing infrastructure.
3Productivity
If a standardized licensing API is implemented, then duplication of effort is reduced and efficiency increases, but flexibility in enforcement mechanisms may be limited
Solution Approach 1:
The API serves as a flexible intermediary layer that standardizes communication between software products and the licensing service. It provides a uniform interface for license management operations while allowing software products to implement their own specific enforcement mechanisms based on license evaluation results, thus maintaining flexibility despite standardization.
Solution Approach 2:
The licensing system is segmented into distinct components: the licensing service that handles core license management functions, the API that provides standardized access, and the software products that implement specific enforcement logic. This segmentation allows each component to be optimized independently, maintaining efficiency through standardization while preserving flexibility in enforcement mechanisms.
Data Source
AI summary
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.