Pickholtz

Pickholtz v. Rainbow Technologies, Inc.

Good Law

260 F. Supp. 2d 980·2003 WL 21038181·2003 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7664

United States District Court, Northern District of CaliforniaMay 1, 2003C 98-2661 CRBCalifornia4,906 words

Opinion

Breyer, J.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

This suit involves the alleged infringement by defendants Rainbow Technologies, Inc. and Software Security, Inc. (“Rainbow”) of U.S. Patent No. 4,593,353 (“the ’353 patent”) owned by plaintiff Andrew Pickholtz. Now before the Court is Rainbow’s motion for summary judgment of non-infringement and Rainbow’s motion for partial summary judgment regarding damages.

The ’353 patent relates to a device used to protect against unauthorized access to computer software. The device includes a pseudorandom number (“PRN”) generator that, when sent a first number, returns a second number. The second number is determined by an algorithm contained within the PRN generator; however, it appears random. The computer software to be protected is associated with two authorization codes stored on a memory device. One of the codes is sent to the PRN generator. The resulting number returned from the PRN generator is then compared with the second code. The number must match the second authorization code in order for access to the protected software to be allowed.

Rainbow sells several products for protecting access to computer software. Some of the products are only software based,…

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