Roving software license for a hardware agent

United States Patent

Davis

[54] ROVING SOFTWARE LICENSE FOR A HARDWARE AGENT

[75] Inventor: Derek L. Davis, Phoenix, Ariz.

[73] Assignee: Intel Corporation, Santa Clara, Calif.

[21] Appl. No.: 303,084
[22] Filed: Sep. 7, 1994

[51] Int. CI.6 H04K 1/00

[52] U.S. CI 380/25; 380/4; 380/23;

380/30

[58] Field of Search 380/23-25,30,

380/4

[56] References Cited

U.S. PATENT DOCUMENTS

4,807,288 2/1989 Ugon et al 380/30

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

Struif, Bruno "The Use of Chipcards for Electronic Signatures and Encryption" in: Proceedings of the 1989 Conference on VLSI and Computer Peripherals, IEEE Computer Society Press, 1989, pp. 4/155^/158. Dusse, Stephen R. and Burton S. Kaliski "A Cryptographic

IIIIIIIIIK

US005473692A

[ii] Patent Number: 5,473,692

[45] Date of Patent: Dec. 5, 1995

Library for the Motorla 56000" in: Damgard, I. M. Advances in Cryptology—Proceedings of EUROCRYPT 90, Springer-Verlag, 1991, pp. 230-244. DSP56000/DSP56001 Digital Signal Processor User's Manual, Motorola, 1990, pp. 2—2.

Primary Examiner—David C. Cain

Attorney, Agent, or Firm—Blakely, Sokoloff, Taylor & Zafman

[57] ABSTRACT

An integrated circuit component for enforcing licensing restrictions. Such enforcement is performed through remote transmission of access privileges for executing a licensed program from the integrated circuit component to another similar component. The integrated circuit component comprising a non-volatile memory for storing a uniquely designated key pair, an authentication device certificate and a manufacturer public key along with cryptographic algorithms, a processor for executing the cryptographic algorithms in order to process information inputted into the integrated circuit component and for transmitting the processed information into volatile memory and a random number generator for generating the uniquely designated key pair internally within the integrated circuit component.

17 Claims, 9 Drawing Sheets