It was announced on Wednesday that Stream Theory, Inc. obtained a patent on its streaming software technology. U.S. Patent No. 7,096,253, entitled “Method and Apparatus for Streaming Software,” issued on August 22, 2006, and includes 46 claims related to systems and methods “for allowing a remotely-located computer program or data to be accessed on a local computer in such a way as to severely limit the possibility of said program or data being indiscriminately copied and propagated, plus providing time limits on the access to said program or data.” The first claim in the patent is for a system comprising a processor and memory with modules stored therein, with the modules including “a target process associated with a streaming target program; a network file system driver for facilitating access for an agent procedure to software-on-demand file resources associated with the streaming target program … and a subset of the software-on-demand file resources associated with the streaming target program, including at least one executable file resource.” The processor “generates the agent procedure to demand a software-on-demand file resource associated with the target program from the remote software-on-demand file server using the network file system driver,” and also “executes the at least one executable file resource to run the target process, and wherein the agent procedure uses data to uniquely identify the software-on-demand file resource.” According to the patent, this invention adds to traditional network file system capabilities by providing a “fine-grain, process-specific access control, time-limited access, and a persistent caching scheme.”

U.S. Patent No. 7,096,253: LINK
Market Wire Press Release: LINK
Stream Theory Website: LINK