Patent ID: 8516090

Claim:
A method of redistributing licenses for accessing electronic content, the method comprising: distributing a total number of licenses for the electronic content among a plurality of nodes; at each node in the plurality of nodes, allocating up to a maximum number of licenses in response to license requests, wherein a given node's maximum number of licenses is initially equal to a default number of licenses specified for the given node; detecting unavailability of a first node; before responding to another license request, redistributing the first node's default number of licenses among one or more backup nodes, wherein said redistributing comprises, for each of the one or more backup nodes: identifying a percentage of the first node's default number of licenses to redistribute to the backup node; and increasing the backup node's maximum number of licenses by the identified percentage of the first node's default number of licenses; detecting availability of the first node after said redistributing; at each of the one or more backup nodes: calculating a first difference between the backup node's maximum number of licenses and either the number of licenses currently allocated by the backup node or the backup node's default number of licenses, whichever is less; and decreasing the backup node's maximum number of licenses by the amount the backup node's maximum number of licenses was increased in said increasing; calculating a sum of all said first differences; and setting the maximum number of licenses the first node can allocate to entities requesting access to the content equal to said sum.