US Patent 7962713 Memory device having secure non-volatile locking functionality

A device and method is provided for maintaining, upon unlocking of a memory, the lock status of the memory prior to the memory being unlocked and recreating the lock status when power is turned on again. An information storage device, such as a memory card, performs unlocking of a memory in response to a command input from an information processing apparatus and stores lock status data prior to the memory being unlocked in a non-volatile memory (NVM). When the information storage device is turned off and then on, the information storage device recreates a lock status of the memory on the basis of the lock status data stored in the storage means and performs memory access control based on the recreated lock status.