Software Licensing Platform Relaunched

Software Licensing and Protection (SLP) Services, a service used by ISVs to prevent unauthorized application use and protect intellectual property, is being relaunched by the start-up company InishTech. SLP was originally launched in Oct. 2007, but Microsoft stopped accepting new customers for the service in Oct. 2008 when it determined there was not an appropriate group within Microsoft to support the service permanently. InishTech will take over support of the approximately 120 existing customers of the service and reopen the service for new customers.

InishTech, based in Dublin, Ireland, was created through the collaboration of Microsoft IP Ventures (which helps start-up companies license technology from Microsoft Research) and Enterprise Ireland (an agency of the Irish government that assists with enterprise development).

SLP helps developers prevent software piracy by providing an activation system similar to that used by Microsoft as part of its Windows Genuine Advantage program. An SLP SDK allows developers to mark sections of their code to execute only if an appropriate digital license has been obtained from an SLP server, which can be hosted either by Microsoft or on the customer’s premises. The SDK also transforms code to make it harder to reverse-engineer than the original source code. The Dotfuscator tool included with Visual Studio can be used in addition to or instead of SLP to prevent reverse-engineering of application code, although Dotfuscator can only be used on code that uses the .NET Framework (managed code).