Patent ID: 7536356

Claim:
A machine-implemented method for managing software licenses in a computer network having a maximum number of said licenses for use with a licensed software program, comprising the steps of: counting numbers of said licensed software program in use at a plurality of nodes of said computer network to obtain counts of software licenses in use by each node; performing a sanity scan on at least one subset of said plurality of nodes; generating a scan result message; transmitting said counts to a master node of said computer network; said transmitting step transmits said scan result message with at least one of said counts; calculating a total number of software users on said computer network, said calculating step uses said counts; evaluating license allocation conditions using said total number of users; wherein the license allocation conditions include an error threshold that results in a lockout initiation and a warning threshold that results in a warning message; wherein the error threshold and warning threshold are values related to the maximum number of licenses; wherein the error threshold is greater than the warning threshold; and sending the warning message, using at least one processor, when the warning threshold is exceeded, and thereafter initiating a lockout when the error threshold is exceeded; checking whether one of said scan result messages has been received from all of said nodes; and deallocating any licenses allocated to users of any of said nodes from which a scan result message has not been received.