Microsoft to Apply Watermarking Technology to Software

Via cdrinfo.com -

Microsoft filled a patent on June 12 describing a watermarking technology that could be applied to downloadable software, in an effort to combat piracy.

The patent, filled at the United States Patent and Trademark Office, relates to a method for encoding information, termed a "digital watermark" or more simply a "watermark", into a program or application downloaded over the Internet. Microsoft said that its goal is to make this information difficult to be detected and forged.

The inclusion of the digital watermark information would make every instance of a software unique. "When a software is distributed or sold over the Internet, personal identification information, such as a purchaser's name, address, telephone number, credit card number, etc., is collected and encoded into a binary sequence," reads Microsoft's patent.

"The binary sequence is mapped into an instruction swap table to create a sequence that is used for exchanging, or swapping, specific occurrences of pairs of non-interfering instructions. As the application is downloaded, pairs of non-interfering instructions are efficiently swapped based on the encoded binary sequence. Thus, the downloaded application is watermarked with the personal identification information collected from the purchaser before the application was downloaded," Microsoft explains.

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Who needs DRM when you have watermarks like these...