Patent EA-001371-B1 (EA)
Title: A cd-rom software protection system
Inventor: SKALTOS PETROS
IPC: G06F21/00
Filed: 1996-05-28
Abstract: 1. System for the protection of PC Software from illegal copying comprising the production CD-ROM or DVD-ROM disk, using Glass Masering equipment, with Software stored on it, wherein during the production phase a ring of a specific width is destroyed, said ring has predetermined polar co-ordinate, and said software contains a protection algorithm which detects said polar co-ordinate and compares thus determined co-ordinate to the predetermined polar co-ordinate, wherein the value of the predetermined polar co-ordinate is input in the algorithm. 2. A CD-ROM disk according to claim 1, wherein one or more areas, namely protection rings, that are homocentric rings are reserved for special treatment with glass mastering equipment and storage of encrypted data. 3. A CD-ROM disk according to claim 2; wherein permanent destruction of the optical properties of one or more specific ring areas in the middle of the reserved areas (inspection ring) of the glass master is achieved with the use of mastering equipment that creates a continuous spiral track that has the form of a continuous pit. 4. A mark according to claim 3 that is a ring of non-standard format (inspection ring) that can be accessed only by special software methods. 5. A mark according to claim 4; wherein any attempt to access this ring (inspection ring) with special software will result in the issue of a specific error code message by the operating system. 6. A CD-ROM disk according to claim 3; wherein the reserved areas of the protection ring that are adjacent to the inspection ring contain encoded data that include the precise polar coordinates of the inspection ring and encrypted information about the protected application software. 7. A CD-ROM disk according to claim 2, wherein the area of the CD that does not undergo any specific treatment (application rings) has the standard CD-ROM or DVD-ROM format and can be used for Information storage. 8. A CD-ROM disk according to claim 3, wherein the treatment is carried out at a predefined position, in a homocentric ring of a specific width (inspection ring). 9. A CD-ROM disk according to claim 7; wherein the CD, following the radial direction towards the circumference, contains an area with application code & data (application Ring) followed by one protection Ring in alternative succession with application ring, the protection ring has a specific location on the CD-ROM and precise width size and according to this pattern, the inner & outer rings are always application rings containing application code & data. 10. A software protection system according to claims 1; wherein the protection algorithm (protection code) is placed in the beginning of the application code thus forming a composite application code that is distributed into the application ring areas. 11. A software protection system according to claim 10; wherein the encrypted data that are stored in the protection ring indicating the precise polar coordinates of the inpsection ring are also contained in the protection code that is part of the composite application code. 12. A software protection system according to claims 1 or 9, wherein its operation comprises of the following steps: verify the position of the inspection ring and measure its polar co-ordinates compare the measured with the predefined polar co-ordinates that were stored on the disk during the production phase in the potection ring compare the measured with the predefined polar co-ordinates that were placed in the protection code and, If both comparisons agree, the authenticity of the disk is verified, while in the opposite case the disk is regarded an illegal copy and the installation and/or execution operations are cancelled. 13. A software protection system according to claim 12, wherein the protection code accesses the inspection ring area and verifies that a predefined error code message is obtained. 14. A software protection system according to claim 12, wherein the authenticity verification is carried out prior to the protected application.