Patent ID: 6966062

Claim:
A method for allocating use of an access device between a host operating system and a guest operating system, the method comprising: determining whether a received request to use the access device is from the host operating system; determining whether one of the host operating system and the guest operating system has a key for the access device, where the key enables one of the host operating system and the guest operating system to use the access device; determining the request as one of an altering request to change a state of the access device and a passive request to read the access device; accepting the request from the host operating system, if the request is an altering request from the host operating system and neither the host operating system nor the guest operating system has the key; and rejecting the request from the guest operating system, if the request is an altering request from the guest operating system and neither the host operating system nor the guest operating system has the key.