Estimation of software features based birthmark

Abstract

Software birthmark is an important property of software that is successfully used to detect piracy and theft of software. Estimation of a birthmark provides critical information about the extent of piracy performed in a software. This information can then be used to decide over many important issues related with software theft and piracy, including legal and ethical considerations. Research shows that a software birthmark based on multiple software features provides a powerful and unique identity to software, hence more useful in theft detection. The estimation of this features based birthmark may provide even close detection and estimation of software piracy. This estimation process provides an objective measure to detect software theft and piracy efficiently and accurately. The research uses the concept of fuzzy logic for estimation, which has already proved its success in estimation of other birthmarks. The technique is tested for features based birthmark through a case study and the results support validity of the process. The details of the case study elaborate upon techniques and details of implementing software birthmark estimation process and show that the method is effective in terms of efficiency and accuracy for the estimation of features based software birthmark.