Patent ID: 8706875

Claim:
A method, comprising: receiving an access request for at least one application located on a smart card unit, wherein the request is received from one client of at least two clients; checking whether the at least one application located on the smart card unit is already active; activating the at least one application located on the smart card unit when the application is not active; sharing access to the at least one application located on the smart card unit for the at least two clients in parallel, wherein sharing access is granted according to access rules, wherein the one client of the at least two clients has a higher priority than the remaining clients of the at least two clients, and wherein access to the at least one application can be performed by at least one of: referencing the application explicitly and referencing the application implicitly; receiving a deactivate request for the at least one application from the one client of the at least two clients; checking whether access to the at least one application is shared with at least one other client of the at least two clients; and deactivating the at least one application when there is no other client sharing the at least one application located on the smart card.