CASE STUDY Tapwave Inc, United States of America

Tapwave, Inc, located in Mountain View - USA, producer of the Zodiac handheld, a Mobile Entertainment Console that runs an enhanced version of the PalmOS® operating system. It is designed from the ground up for entertainment and optimized for video gaming, music, viewing pictures or video, but also runs the thousands of PalmOS® applications available today.

MobileWizardry worked closely with Tapwave providing experience and knowledge to build the digital rights management (DRM) solution of the device; ultimately protecting the content of material being published for its handheld device.

The DRM solution involves a public key cryptography digital signature system, specifically developed by RSA technology. Applications are digitally signed and verified at runtime when executed on the platform; to ensure the software being executed is official and not tampered with in any way, a common technique used to illegally share applications between users within the 'warez' scene.

MobileWizardry has extensive experience with DRM/anti-piracy techniques and developed a number of techniques to attack the problem - all while building up a strong knowledge base on how to best approach the issue. The wealth of experience has been shared with Tapwave to design a strong DRM solution that can protect the software developers and their licensee's from piracy.

Aaron Ardiri has developed a number of DRM/anti-piracy systems for Palm OS and published a paper on the topic specific for the PalmSource Developer Conference 2000 in San Francisco, USA avilable online called Palm OS Software Protection.

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