Expert Witness

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.