Patent ID: 8615751

Claim:
A method of patching software based on seeded product information, the method comprising: receiving, at a client system from a software vendor system, a patch deliverable, the patch deliverable including a software patch and information identifying each of a plurality of target software packages for which the software patch is intended, wherein the target software packages of the plurality of target software packages comprises a plurality of different applications; reading by the client system the information identifying the target software packages from the patch deliverable; determining by the client system whether the identified target software packages is a known software package of the client, wherein determining whether the identified target software packages indicates a known software package of the client comprises comparing the information identifying the target software packages from the patch deliverable to seed information stored in the software package that is accessible to the client system and if there is a match from the comparison then the software package is a known target software package to the client system, otherwise the software package is an unknown target software package to the client system; in response to determining the information identifying the target software packages for which the patch is intended is at least one known software package of the client system, installing at the client system the patch for at least one known software product; and in response to determining the information identifying the target software packages for which the patch is intended is at least one unknown software package, identifying by the client system all unknown software packages and installing at the client system the patch for at least one unknown software product of an unknown software package; wherein identifying by the client system all unknown software package comprises: presenting, by the client system to a user, options identifying at least one software package for which the patch may be used; receiving, at the client system from the user, a selection of one of the software packages; seeding, by the client system, the selected software package with embedded software patch information from the patch deliverable, wherein the selected software package will be known to the system as the corresponding software package for this software patch in future invocations.