Articles about intellectual property litigation and technical expert witnesses.
Laws and legal systems vary by country, sometimes substantially. Being geographical and cultural neighbors that also share a basis in British common law, it might seem that courts in the United States and Canada would be among the most similar in the world. In fact, however, there are many significant distinctions. In this article we summarize some noteworthy differences.
It is often a challenge for non-lawyers—including expert witnesses new to patent litigation—to distinguish between the phrases "patent infringement" and "patent invalidity." Adding to the potential for confusion, these two very different legal concerns are often at issue in a single trial and thus to be considered and decided by the very same judge or jury. This article clarifies the distinction between infringement and invalidity.
A brief glossary of licensing terminology to help engineering teams understand legal terms related to open source software.
The rising popularity of Linux has spurred many embedded developers to consider it as an RTOS alternative. Here are just some of the legal implications for the proprietary parts of firmware with which developers should be familiar.
Software has become ubiquitous. From microwave ovens to electronic throttle controls, it is now embedded into the fabric of our lives through billions of new products each year. Whether for infringement of intellectual property rights or product liability, when products controlled by software are the subject of litigation, it is imperative to analyze the embedded software, also known as firmware, properly and thoroughly.
In a previously supported case of alleged software copyright infringement, the plaintiff brought suit against the defendant for allegedly continuing to use the plaintiff’s copyrighted software source code in the defendant’s products after termination of a license agreement between the parties. Fortunately, automated tools helped experts to quickly and inexpensively detect copying of software source code.
Dead code has been frequently encountered when conducting source code reviews for litigation. The presence of dead code can have unintended legal consequences and several scenarios have been observed in which dead code heightened the probability of a loss in court.
There are various intellectual property protections that are available to the creators of software. This primer will provide software engineers with a brief overview of some of the areas of IP law that are relevant to their work.
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