Patent ID: 8650246

Claim:
A distributed method for licensing an executable software product, the method comprising: receiving a request from a client-side to access to a software product by a user; determining an identity of the user and a local setting of the client-side; selecting, at a server-side, licensing information specific for the determined locale setting from a licensing database; transmitting, from the server-side to the client-side, the selected licensing information so that the transmitted licensing information can be output to the user; and receiving a request from the client-side for confirmation of a license agreement for the software product based on the output licensing information; selecting, at the server-side, stored contract information based on the requested access to the software product and the determined identity of the user; verifying selected contract information associated with the software product; executing the requested software product for the user upon successful verification of the contract information; storing, at the server-side, usage information related to a use of the executed software product by the user; and invoicing the user based on stored contract information and stored usage information, wherein the determining an identity, selecting licensing information, transmitting the selected licensing information, outputting licensing information and receiving a request for confirmation are performed upon activation of a licensing module integrated with the software product; and wherein the software product and the integrated licensing module are executed at the server-side and the integrated licensing module receives credentials of the user and the local setting from the client-side and transmits the selected licensing information to the client-side.