Patent ID: 7370008

Claim:
A method for detecting pirated copies of a serialized software program located on a remote computer including a remote memory for storing a program, a remote revision level, and a program serial number, the method comprising: providing a main computer including a main memory for storing the program serial number, the remote revision level corresponding to the program serial number, and a validation code for a remote program corresponding to the serial number, the validation code indicating whether the program stored in the remote memory is valid or invalid; receiving at the main computer the remote revision level and the program serial number stored in the remote memory transmitted from the remote computer to the main computer; comparing the remote program revision level received from the remote computer to the remote program revision level stored in the main memory corresponding to the program serial number received from the remote computer; changing the validation code to indicate the serial number is invalid upon detection in the comparing step of a difference between the remote program revision level received from the remote computer and the remote program revision level stored in the memory of the main computer corresponding to the program serial number received from the remote computer; detecting whether the program stored in the remote memory is valid or invalid based upon the validation code corresponding to the program serial number received from the remote computer; and denying access to data stored in the memory of the main computer when the program corresponding to the serial number stored in the remote memory is invalid.