Patent ID: 7458100

Claim:
A method of copy protecting a program to be installed on a computer system, said computer system including a computing section and a copy protection unit, said method comprising: determining a decision section of the program, which decision section, during execution of the program as a function of a current running state of the program, defines information influencing further course of the program; and converting the decision section of the program to produce a copy-protected version of the program, wherein converting comprises: providing code in the copy-protected version of the program, wherein said code is executable exclusively in the copy protection unit and exclusively during execution of the copy-protected version of the program in the computing section, and wherein said code includes data and a processing regulation applicable to the data for execution of the decision section of the program; and providing a program instruction in the copy-protected version of the program, the program instruction being configured such that, during execution of the copy-protected version of the program in the computing section, the copy protection unit is called and the code is transferred to the copy protection unit for execution therein.