Patent ID: 8799321

Claim:
A license management apparatus comprising: a database of user information, the user information comprising at least one of a user identification (ID) of a user and a group ID of a group of users to which the user belongs; a license database, the license database associating the user information with a license issued to the user; a license invalidation condition database, the license invalidation condition database associating a license invalidation condition that identifies a change of the user information with a license invalidation rule for invalidating the license; and a processor that executes instructions causing the license management apparatus to execute a license invalidation process of invalidating the license comprising: reading the user information from the database of user information; requesting a user management server for corresponding user information of the user that corresponds to the user information, the user management server managing a user information database storing the corresponding user information; receiving the corresponding user information from the user management server; comparing the user information and the corresponding user information; detecting a difference between the user information and the corresponding user information based on a result of the comparing; determining that the difference corresponds to the change of the user information identified by the license invalidation condition; and applying the license invalidation rule associated with the license invalidation condition to the license regularly in response to determining that the difference corresponds to the change of the user information identified by the license invalidation condition.