Company:Vault Corporation
Vault Corporation was founded in 1981 by W. Krag Brotby, an unsung technology pioneer.[1] Already a successful real-estate entrepreneur, Brotby authored a book and software program called Tax and Cash. Frustrated by "pirating" of the software (people making copies for free without paying for it) Brotby came up with a mechanism to attempt to defeat illegal copying. He called it the Prolok Disk (US patent 4,785,361).[2] The technology was influential in many later copy-protection techniques and his original patent is referenced on more than 140 later patents. Prolok was used by many early 80's software companies [3] including Ashton-Tate, developers of the first massively successful PC database software. Vault also invested millions of dollars on the legal front on behalf of the software industry as a whole, authoring and testing the first of many controversial "Shrink Wrap" software law. Vault's contract was ultimately defeated in the 5th Circuit Federal Appeals Court.
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