A few months ago, it seemed to be over for Napster, the now infamous music-swapping Web site. The music industry protested that allowing Napster users to download music for free was cheating musicians and record labels out of royalties and other fees. After months of court battles, an appeals court ordered the company to halt the exchange of copyrighted music on its Internet site unless authorized to do so by the musician who created it.

But how could the company prevent a user from downloading an unauthorized composition? Sean Ward, a 20-year-old University of Virginia student, offered a solution. His TRM software "is an acoustic fingerprinting system that describes the pattern that exists within a piece of music." Like real fingerprints, no two songs — even different versions of the same song — have identical fingerprints.

Napster can use Ward’s technology to organize the site’s music files and determine which songs are available to be downloaded and which aren’t. TRM can then create a blocking mechanism to prevent users from swapping unauthorized material.

A computer science major, Ward started his own company, Relatable LLC two years ago to market his technology. Ward, who took an indefinite leave of absence from U.Va. to devote his time to Relatable, is confident his company is in a league of its own. "We will be the only company that successfully indexed all music available on digital file through Napster," he boasts.

While Ward denies the suggestion that his software saved Napster, he admits it is very important to the site’s future existence.