Expert Witness

As a reader of this blog you likely know that Albert Einstein was employed, early in his career, as a patent examiner in the Swiss Patent Office.  But did you also know that he later served as a testifying expert witness in at least two patent litigations? In this month's blog we take a look at this interesting footnote to history.

An overview of the U.S. FDA's 510(k) process for medical device approval and discusses its potential pitfalls with an eye toward collaborations between software experts and lawyers litigating the resulting medical device failures.

It can be difficult to find an expert witness with the perfect experience in the specific technology at issue in your litigation.  But beware not to just retain the first qualified technologist you find, as even a highly knowledgeable expert can come up short if they lack key personality traits.

The long-running court fight between Google and Oracle over Android's unlicensed use of Java API code is coming to a final battle at the Supreme Court. The importance of the final decision in this case to software developers cannot be understated.  

In the context of a civil or criminal court case, a witness is a person who answers questions under oath during a deposition or a trial.  The statements of each witness are his testimony, which is one type of evidence that the trier of fact (judge or jury) may consider in reaching its ultimate decision about what happened.  Significantly, there are several types of witnesses—including expert witnesses—with the rules regarding testimony depending on the type.  In particular, this article explains why opinions are allowed to be included in expert witness testimony.

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.

In this technology brief, we present key findings from Barr Group's 2018 Embedded Systems Safety and Security Survey that is relevant to lawyers engaging in litigation over the design of electronics and software.

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.

During the Gulf War, twenty-eight U.S. soldiers were killed and almost one hundred others were wounded when a nearby Patriot missile defense system failed to properly track a Scud missile launched from Iraq. The cause of the failure was later found to be a programming error in the computer embedded in the Patriot’s weapons control system.

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.

Embedded systems are either fixed or programmable combinations of hardware and software designed to perform a specific, pre-defined task within a larger mechanical or electrical system.