Abstract: A developer of digital products can provide one or more digital products for sale to a user, some of which are not purchased or active. Subsequently, when a user desires to purchase such digital products, only a license file needs to be provided to the user. To encourage such bundling, the bundler, such as a hardware manufacturer can include identifiers to enable a referral payment to be paid to the manufacturer. Similarly, identifiers of a merchant of record can be included to direct the user to a specific merchant for the sale. To streamline the management of digital licenses, an authorized merchant can be used to provide digital licenses upon purchase, even if the sale was completed with a merchant of record.

Abstract: Systems and methods for software licensing enforcement using an ACPI BIOS. A digital license is provided that includes information about both the software and hardware on which it is to be run. The licensing process receives hardware and software information from the end user and binds the license to both. A main BIOS binary contains code and static motherboard specific data. Dynamic state values containing, e.g., machine-specific system management data, such as, a serial number may be stored subsequently on NVRAM or its equivalent. The main BIOS binary allows provides sufficient functionality to test the hardware. Once the software to be loaded on the system is known, a corresponding digital license containing both the software and hardware information is loaded to NVRAM.

Abstract: A portal obtains information from a customer for providing a product key for activating a product to such customer. The obtained information identifies the product for which the product key is required. The portal sends the obtained information to an eligibility service which determines whether the customer is eligible to obtain the product key. If so, the eligibility service determines and identifies to the portal a type of product key to be provided to the customer. The portal redirects the customer to a distributor to obtain the identified type of product key, where the redirection includes the identified type of product key to be provided to the customer. The distributor conducts an online transaction with the customer to provide the identified type of product key thereto.