McAfee.com today announced that they have been granted a patent by the United States Patent and Trademark Office for a method of delivering software as a Web service. United States Patent 6,266,774 for the “Method and system for securing, managing or optimizing a personal computer” was issued on July 24, 2001.

According to the patent, McAfee.com has devised a system and method for automatically delivering and executing security, management, and optimization services to a PC user over the Internet. The patent encompasses the ability to deliver software capabilities encapsulated within markup language (HTML/XML) communications units delivered over a logical Internet connection to a browser which then executes scripts to automatically perform one or more tasks on a computer.

Examples of tasks performed by this method include detection and removal of viruses, searching for software and data that needs to be upgraded, upgrade of software and data, archival of software and data, and hardware and software diagnostics.

 
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