Isaac Pflaum - Expert Witness

Isaac Pflaum

Software Litigation Expert

Isaac Pflaum is an IT litigation consultant and source code reviewer. For the last five years, Mr. Pflaum has specialized in advising clients on patent, copyright, trade secret and software implementation disputes.

Mr. Pflaum is skilled in code review and reverse engineering of software systems. He has extensive experience reviewing and reverse engineering code written in C-based programming languages, and has also reviewed machine code, assembly code, CAD code, and application code for enterprise n-tier and SOA applications written in a variety of languages.

He has been involved in a variety of intellectual property, contract, fraud, and computer forensics cases. Mr. Pflaum is also an attorney and registered patent agent with professional experience in financial services and software development.

Summary of Qualifications

  • Served as a software expert in more than 20 cases including more than a dozen intellectual property cases.
  • Has been deposed as an expert witness in a patent infringement case.
  • Has authored numerous expert reports in intellectual property cases and other types of cases.
  • Has been retained and provided expert opinions on behalf of plaintiffs, and defendants.
  • Has served as an expert in International Trade Commission (ITC) investigations, in addition to federal and state court cases.

Areas of Expertise

  • Wireless devices and mobile apps

    Android, iOS, Windows Mobile

  • Programming and software development

    Java, C/C++, C#, XML, Eclipse, Visual Studio, SlickEdit, .NET

  • Internet applications and websites

    Perl, Python, PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, AJAX, Node.js, ASP.NET

  • Hardware description and controllers

    Verilog, CodeSys, MatLab

  • Databases

    RDBMS, SQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, Postgres, PostgreSQL

  • Operating systems and servers

    Linux, Windows, Mac OS, UNIX, Apache, Chrome

  • Networking and protocols

    TCP/IP, HTTP, IMAP/POP/SMTP, DNS

  • Litigation support

    Intellectual property and patent infringement, software design/source code inspection and review, expert witness testimony at trials and depositions, breach-of-contract and non-performance claims, computer forensics, data recovery, and metadata analysis

Litigation Experience

  • Greg Robillard v. Opal Labs, LLC. (Dist. Oregon)


    Retained on behalf of Robillard in a dispute involving the alleged misappropriation of trade secrets. Performed an investigation of the GitHub and Internet archives using ElasticSearch to search over 800 million records.

  • Sequoia Technology, LLC. v. Dell Technologies, EMC, HP, Hitachi, and RedHat (Dist. Del.)


    Retained on behalf of Sequoia Technology in a patent infringement dispute to reverse engineer open source code bases used for logical volume management, identify competitive products, and prepare infringement contentions.

  • Jason Simpson Defense (Sup. Ct. Maricopa County AZ)


    Retained on behalf of Mr. Simpson to forensically acquire several years of social media postings relating to four subjects from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

  • Arendi S.A.R.I. v. Motorolla Mobility LLC, et. al. (W.D. Wash)


    Retained on behalf of Arendi to review source code of numerous Andriod, iOS and Blackberry mobile phone applications. Prepared claim charts with relevant code citations.

  • Andrew Dohrmann v. Intuit Inc., H&R Block, Inc.., and John Does 1-20 (N.D. Calif.)


    Retained on behalf of Mr. Dohrmann to review web application code and robots.txt directives. Case is on hold pending the disposition of several preliminary motions.

  • Morris Development, Inc. v. Extreme Impact, Inc. (Sup. Ct. Calif.)


    Retained on behalf of Morris Development to perform a source code comparison of .Net application code. Compared client’s code with 65 versions of defendant’s source code to establish that the accused works incorporated the source code and architecture and used the core functionality of client’s application. Submitted an expert report and testified at deposition and at trial.

  • TRUSTID, Inc. v. Next Caller Inc. (Del.)


    Retained on behalf of TRUSTID to perform Python code review relating to SIP data processing, call screening and applied machine learning (ML) used in call-number-spoofing and fraud detection.

  • AGIS Software Development LLC v. LG Electronics, Inc.


    Jurisdiction: District Court for the Eastern District of Texas
    Counsel: Arnold & Porter
    Nature of Suit: Patent Infringement

  • Liberi v. Taitz, (C.D. Calif.)


    Retained on behalf of Taitz to investigate online postings and a Twitter archive to verify compliance with a settlement agreement.

  • Yardi Systems, Inc. v. Property Solutions International, Inc.


    Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court for the Central District of California
    Counsel: Morrison & Foerster, LLP
    Nature of Suit: Copyright and Trade Secret

  • Certain Road Milling Machines and Components Thereof


    Jurisdiction: International Trade Commission
    Counsel: Sterne Kessler Goldstein & Fox
    Nature of Suit: Patent Infringement

  • G2 Database Marketing, Inc. v. Clear Advantage Marketing


    Jurisdiction: District Court for the Southern District of Iowa
    Nature of Suit: Copyright and Trade Secret

  • “Sasco” Pre-litigation Assessment


    Retained on behalf of a computer chip manufacturer, which owned multiple patents relating to CPU power management to determine whether a patent infringement claim could be supported against a competing chip manufacturer (codenamed “Sasco”), that the client suspected would soon market a new CPU making use of the client’s patented power management capabilities. Reviewed the source code for the latest version of the Linux kernel to determine whether Sasco had recently modified the Linux kernel, and if so, how such modifications reflected the power management capacities of Sasco’s chip.

  • Global Tel*Link Corporation v. Securus Technologies, Inc


    Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas
    Nature of Suit: Patent Infringement

  • Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry (DLI) v. IBM


    Jurisdiction: Dauphin County Court of Common Pleas
    Nature of Suit: Fraud and Breach of Contract

  • Pre-litigation Copyright Infringement Assessment


    Counsel: Perkins Coie. Retained to compare ARM-based firmware libraries with suspected infringing code and prepared a report detailing and quantifying similarities evidencing copying. Performed fuzzy matching, reported similarity metrics, and filtered third party materials and generated side-by side comparisons illustrating substantially similar portions of the code.

  • Computing or Graphics Systems, Components Thereof, and Vehicles Containing, Inv., 337-TA-984 (I.T.C.)


    Retained on behalf of Volkswagen America to review design specifications and technical documentation, and reverse engineer VHDL integrated circuit design code for a Northbridge controller chip to identify prior art memory controller DRAM access scheduling and prioritization functions. Provided VHDL code citations for invalidity contentions and assisted testifying expert in the preparation of an expert declaration in support of invalidity opinions.

  • Software Patent Suit


    Counsel: Sterne Kessler Goldstein & Fox
    Jurisdiction: International Trade Commission
    Nature of Suit: Patent Infringement

  • Kemper Corporate Services Inc. v. Computer Sciences Corporation et al.


    Jurisdiction: AAA Arbitration
    Counsel: Sidely Austin
    Nature of Suit: Breach of Contract

  • Software Patent Suit


    Counsel: Perkins Coie
    Nature of Suit: Patent Infringement

  • Software Patent Suit


    Counsel: Perkins Coie
    Nature of Suit: Patent Infringement

  • Software Copyright Suit


    Counsel: Finnegan
    Nature of Suit: Copyright Infringement

  • Software Patent Pre-litigation Assessment


    Retained on behalf of a computer chip manufacturer, which owned multiple patents relating to CPU power management to assess whether patent claims were infringed by open source on-chip controller source code for managing the operating frequency, voltage, memory bandwidth, and thermal control of a massively multithreaded processor and its associated memory. Traced controller code to determine if the operation of the processor and controller met all limitations of the relevant patent claims.

  • Michael Mohr v. Science and Engineering Services, LLC (ND. Al)


    Retained on behalf of Science and Engineering Services, LLC in a case involving alleged copyright infringement. Reviewed the source code and metadata of the allegedly copied program to determine whether Plaintiff was the original author of the software or if it had been copied from software which he had not written. In addition, analyzed Plaintiff’s claim to determine whether the allegedly copied software was a “work made for hire” and whether the software was ineligible for copyright under the scènes à faire doctrine. Interviewed fact witnesses, drafted interrogatories, and prepared deposition questions.

  • Contract Failure Pre-Litigation Assessment


    Counsel: Saul Ewing
    Nature of Suit: Fraud and Breach of Contract

  • County of Orange v. Tata Consultancy Services LTD., et al.


    Jurisdiction: District Court for the Central District of California
    Counsel: Theodora Oringher
    Nature of Suit: Fraud and Break of Contract

  • Hogan v. BP West Coast Products, LLC


    Jurisdiction: Superior Court for the State of California, Los Angeles County
    Counsel: Gibson Dunn
    Nature of Suit: Breach of Contract

  • Nekoroski v. Mathai


    Jurisdiction: Massachusetts State Court
    Nature of Suit: Trade Secret and Breach of Contract

  • The Studer Group v. Cleveland Clinic Foundation


    Jurisdiction: District Court for the Northern District of Ohio
    Nature of Suit: Trade Secret

  • CGI v. eHealth Ontario


    Jurisdiction: Arbitration
    Nature of Suit: Break of Contract

  • SAP Business One Implementation Failure (2014)


    Jurisdiction: Arbitration
    Nature of Suit: Breach of Contract

  • Sam’s West, Inc. v. Nicole Aloni (2014)


    Jurisdiction: United States District Court for District of Arkansas
    Nature of Suit: Copyright and Breach of Contract

  • California State Comptroller’s Office (SCO) v. SAP Public Services


    Jurisdiction: Superior Court for the State of California, Sacramento County
    Counsel: Manatt & Phelps
    Nature of Suit: Fraud and Breach of Contract

  • Credit Acceptance Corporation v. Westlake Services LLC


    Jurisdiction: United States Patent and Trademark Office
    Nature of Suit: Covered Business Method Patent Review

  • Symantec v. Veeam (2013)


    Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California
    Counsel: Sterne Kessler Goldstein & Fox
    Nature of Suit: Patent Infringement

  • Electronic Devices Having A Retractable USB Connector


    Jurisdiction: International Trade Commission
    Counsel: Office of Unfair Import Investigations
    Nature of Suit: Patent Infringement

  • Electronic Devices with Communication Capabilities


    Jurisdiction: International Trade Commission
    Counsel: Office of Unfair Import Investigations
    Nature of Suit: Patent Infringement

  • Microprocessors


    Jurisdiction: International Trade Commission
    Counsel: Office of Unfair Import Investigations
    Nature of Suit: Patent Infringement

  • Electronic Devices, Including Wireless Communication Devices


    Jurisdiction: International Trade Commission
    Counsel: Office of Unfair Import Investigations
    Nature of Suit: Patent Infringement

  • Certain Computer Forensic Devices


    Jurisdiction: International Trade Commission
    Counsel: Office of Unfair Import Investigations
    Nature of Suit: Patent Infringement

  • Certain Toner Cartridges


    Jurisdiction: International Trade Commission
    Counsel: Office of Unfair Import Investigations
    Nature of Suit: Patent Infringement

  • Honeywell Int’l, Inc. v. United States


    Jurisdiction: United States Court of Federal Claims
    Nature of Suite: Patent Infringement

  • John Mezzalingua Associates, Inc. dba PPC v. PCT International, Inc.


    Jurisdiction: United States District Court for the Western District of Texas
    Nature of Suit: Patent Infringement

  • Coaxial Cable Connectors, 337-TA-650


    Jurisdiction: International Trade Commission
    Nature of Suit: Patent Infringement

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