I take pride in being able to announce completion of the year-long joint development effort of the anti-piracy server certification protocol for software license management led by the ESD Alliance. The initiative was approved by development committee members Cadence, Siemens EDA and Synopsys who recognize the high cost of software piracy costs hurts both vendors and their customers, a problem the protocol will help mitigate.
The SEMI Server Certification Protocol (SSCP) offers protection against software piracy. It addresses this problem by uniquely identifying each customer license server to assure that licenses are issued only by authorized servers. SCCP, now undergoing standardization, will be managed by SEMI’s Standards Group after its finalization as an industry standard. Committee members intend to implement the protocol in their respective license management software.
Credit for this achievement goes to Cadence, Siemens EDA and Synopsys committee members as well as SEMI for their work to reach this milestone and the effort continues as we move forward to finalize SSCP as an industry standard. An industry-standard protocol to combat software piracy is a growing necessity for design automation software suppliers to ensure only authorized servers are issuing licenses. Design automation software is complex and requires ongoing and significant R&D investments. Bad actors can apply server cloning techniques to access unlicensed copies of the software, putting legitimate users at a competitive disadvantage and potentially forcing software vendors to increase prices to support continuing investments in R&D.
