Monitoring applications for infringement

摘要

Novel tools and techniques for monitoring software applications, and in particular software applications available from app stores, for apps that might infringe the intellectual property of others. Merely by way of example, a tool might identify an application in an app store, download that application, and analyze that application for content that might be infringing. Such analysis can include, but is not limited to, decompiling the application. Meta-content about the application (including portions of the content) can be compared with meta-content about other applications, to identify associations between applications. In other cases, the meta-content can be used to identify acts of intellectual property infringement.

主权项

1. A method, comprising:
maintaining a database comprising existing meta-content about one or more software applications, the database comprising a plurality of records, including a record for each of the one or more software applications; analyzing, with a first computer, a software application to collect meta-content about the software application, by executing the software application, decompiling the software application, and collecting meta-content from the executed software application and the decompiled software application; storing the meta-content about the software application in the database; creating, with a second computer, one or more trigger rules pertaining to a term of interest; determining, with the second computer, weighting factors for one or more of the trigger rules, the weighting factors comprising a weighted ranking representing a relative importance of different characteristics of the meta-content; searching the database with the second computer to identify a result set comprising one or more records that satisfy at least one of the one or more trigger rules; analyzing, with the second computer, the result set with the weighting factors to prioritize the plurality of records in the result set, based at least in part on identifying the term of interest in at least one of one or more of a text string or an image obtained from the executed software application, one or more of a text string or an image obtained from the decompiled software application, or meta-content about the software application; notifying a user about the result set; providing, with the second computer, a user interface for interacting with the user; and displaying, with the user interface, at least some of the records in the result set, based at least in part on analysis of the result set with the weighted ranking; receiving, with the user interface, user input indicating to track a particular publisher of the software application; identifying, with one of the first computer or the second computer, all software applications associated with the particular publisher; analyzing, with the first computer and on one of a predetermined frequency or a selected frequency, each of the software applications associated with the particular publisher to collect meta-content about each of the software applications, by executing each of the software applications, decompiling each of the software applications, and collecting meta-content from each of the software applications; storing the meta-content about each of the software applications in the database; searching each of the software applications in the database with the second computer to identify a second result set comprising one or more second records that satisfy at least one of the one or more trigger rules; analyzing, with the second computer, the second result set with the weighting factors to prioritize the plurality of records in the second result set, based at least in part on search of the term of interest in at least one of one or more of a text string or an image obtained from each executed software application associated with the particular publisher, one or more of a text string or an image obtained from each decompiled software application associated with the particular publisher, or meta-content about each of the software applications associated with the particular publisher; notifying the user about the second result set; and displaying, with the user interface, at least some of the second records in the second result set, based at least in part on analysis of the second result set with the weighted ranking.