Sony, McAfee, Sued Over Software Activation Patent

A lawsuit has been filed in U.S. District Court against Sony and McAfee over a patent for software activation. This is the same company that is currently tied up in a lawsuit with Microsoft over the very same thing (software activation).

The patent in question #5,490,216, awarded to Uniloc founder Ric Richardson in 1996, covers a method for registering and activating software locked to one PC. The technology was developed as a way to prevent users from freely installing or copying a single software program to multiple machines.

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