Techniques to facilitate protection of control system content used in an industrial automation environment are disclosed herein. In at least one implementation, the control system content for use in the industrial automation environment is received, wherein the control system content comprises controller program code that directs an industrial controller to drive a machine system. Content protection instructions for the control system content are also received, wherein the content protection instructions comprise restrictions on execution of the control system content. An execution license that includes process-related constraints for the control system content is generated based on the content protection instructions. The execution license is applied to the control system content to generate protected content, wherein use of the control system content is granted subject to the process-related constraints of the execution license.