Founded 2005 | ||
Vault Corporation was founded in 1981 by W. Krag Brotby, an unsung technology pioneer. 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). 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 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.