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
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Wireless devices and mobile apps
Android, iOS, Windows Mobile
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Programming and software development
Java, C/C++, C#, XML, Eclipse, Visual Studio, SlickEdit, .NET
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Internet applications and websites
Perl, Python, PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, AJAX, Node.js, ASP.NET
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Hardware description and controllers
Verilog, CodeSys, MatLab
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Databases
RDBMS, SQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, Postgres, PostgreSQL
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Operating systems and servers
Linux, Windows, Mac OS, UNIX, Apache, Chrome
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Networking and protocols
TCP/IP, HTTP, IMAP/POP/SMTP, DNS
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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
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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
