Patent ID: 7359882

Claim:
A computer network including a multi-tier licensing system comprising: a user tier including user computers; a remote node tier including remote nodes enabling users to run a licensed software program, at least some remote nodes allowing multiple users at multiple user computers to run the licensed software program concurrently, the remote nodes periodically producing indications of the software usage of the licensed software program by users associated with the remote nodes; and a master node tier including a master node periodically receiving the indications from the remote nodes and calculating a total number of licensed software users, the master node evaluating a license allocation condition using the total number of licensed software users, wherein a sanity scan checking processes running on the remote nodes is done on at least one subset of the remote nodes, where a scan result message is sent from the remote nodes to the master node with at least some of the indications if the sanity scan was successful, the master node checks whether the scan result messages has been received from all of the remote nodes and deallocates any licenses allocated to users of any of the remote nodes from which a scan result message has not been received.