Patent ID: 7818259

Claim:
A method for granting a prepaid license on a machine, comprising: examining licensing information on a designated machine, the licensing information including information on a prepaid use of software, including a number of prepaid uses of the software and unique and unchangeable information identifying the designated machine; comparing information identifying a machine to the unique and unchangeable information identifying the designated machine; determining a number of uses of the software on the machine and comparing the number of uses to the number of prepaid uses; granting the license for use of the software on the machine for the number of prepaid uses remaining upon the information identifying the machine matching the unique and unchangeable information identifying the designated machine and upon the number of uses being determined to be less than the number of prepaid uses; entering into a stored file the date, time of day and identity of the designated machine for each use of the software; and examining validity of the software license during each shut-down of the machine by comparing the date, time of day and the identity of the designated machine for each use of the software with the stored file.