About a year ago, our company made the tough decision on how to better protect our software from illegal use. Our two biggest problems are, "ex-employees" of a legitimate user taking a copy of the software to their next employer/job, and single license users installing/using the software on multiple pcs/offices.

After much review, we decided on implementing Rainbow's Net Sentinel hardware device. Because of the hardware costs and customer support required, combined with a large customer base spread across the nation, we have been forced to slowly implement the hardware keys "a few customers" at a time. To date, we have successfully deployed the hardware key at about 15% of our current customer base with no problems.

Our problem is this, one of our customers is rejecting the fact that they must use a software protection device, to the point that they have attained the service of a lawyer. They argue that we cannot force them to use a software protection device, and that we must remove whatever code is in our application that forces them to use that device. (I should also mention, that when the software shipped to the client, we did not include the protection device at that time. The software has a limited time use, in order to help us schedule the implementation of these devices.)

Just curious if anyone else has had similar threats when implementing any type of software protection? Does anyone know of any cases where a developer was legally denied the right to protect their software?