Drew McManus Drew McManus

Intellectual property drives the software industry, fueling technology and innovation investments. Yet the same advances that drove the computing revolution of the past decade—the Internet, the Web, e-mail, faster processors, cheap memory—have made the protection of intellectual property more difficult than ever. While technology companies tried many techniques to protect their products, virtually all these past techniques were rejected by consumers as unreliable and unfriendly. Today, software companies are turning to 'product activation' as a workable extension of the end-user license agreement. With growing consumer acceptance of activation, it's increasingly clear that activation strikes the elusive, yet necessary balance between user experience and software protection. But all activation