License registration is a common and widely used licensing scheme. It
uses the Registration ID as a means to allow you to identify the application,
as well as the user. Accordingly, it uses the License Key as a means to allow you
to license the application.
In this method, when starting the protected application (or the
Register utility), the registration dialog pops up showing a unique
Registration ID. To register the license, the user must contact you (via phone,
fax, email, website, etc.) and provide the Registration ID. With the received
Registration ID, you can identify the application, and then generate the
License Key to be returned to the user. The license registration is complete
when the user enters the received License Key to the application. As a result,
the application is licensed as the properties encoded in the License Key.
Since the Registration ID is randomly generated, you can ensure that
each copy of the protected application will generate a unique Registration ID.
Starting the application on a different computer will always give a new
different Registration ID. Similarly, starting the application (on the same
computer) after the license is expired will always give
a new different Registration ID. Therefore, you can ensure that the user cannot
reuse the same License Key to activate the license.
While the user must contact you to provide the Registration ID and to
register the license, this method enables you to have full control over the
distribution of your application. During registration, you may collect the user
information as well as payment (through credit cards, PayPal, etc.) before
issuing the License Key to be returned to the user.
See Also