Patent ID: 7194439

Claim:
A job accounting and chargeback system for software products, the system comprising: a software license manager comprising a software product use monitoring subsystem that handles requests for and grants rights to use licensed software products, the use of which requires payment of specified license fees to one or more software product licensors, said software license manager further operable to develop software product use information; a job accounting and chargeback (JACS) subsystem that develops chargeback data that is applicable to charged entities that are separate of and unrelated to the software product licensors and to the specified license fees, and said job accounting and chargeback system allocates the specified license fees in accordance with predefined criteria based on the charged entities utilization of software or computer facilities; a job accounting and software use intercoupling facility that intercouples the software product use information provided by the software license manager with the chargeback data in a manner that provides software-product chargeback information; and a process-data collector that develops process-related data and the job accounting and chargeback subsystem deriving identities of the charged entities from the process-related data.