This article contains information about product licensing implementation in Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 or Microsoft Visual Studio .NET Setup projects.

When you distribute a software product, you may want to prevent unauthorized use of your product by implementing product licensing. You can implement product licensing for your product by creating a .NET Setup project to install your product, and then by implementing product licensing in your .NET Setup project. Some of the common product licensing scenarios that you may implement in your .NET Setup projects are as follows:

• You want to provide only a subset of the full functionality of your product.
• You want to provide a time-limited version of your product.
• You want to provide an unsupported version of your product.
• You want users of your product to register themselves (as paid users or otherwise).

The Microsoft .NET Framework does not provide any built-in support for the implementation product licensing in Setup projects. However, you can use third-party tools to implement product licensing in .NET Setup projects. Some of these third-party tools integrate seamlessly with the .NET Framework.

Note Microsoft Product Support Services does not support or does not provide fixes for issues that occur because of the improper integration of third-party licensing tools with the .NET Framework.

For more information, visit the following Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) Web site:For more information about Xheo.Licensing, a third-party licensing tool, visit the following Xheo Web site: Microsoft provides third-party contact information to help you find technical support. This contact information may change without notice. Microsoft does not guarantee the accuracy of this third-party contact information.

The third-party products that this article discusses are manufactured by companies that are independent of Microsoft. Microsoft makes no warranty, implied or otherwise, regarding the performance or reliability of these products.