Protective Order Articles - Software Expert Witnesses & Litigation Consultants

8February

Quandary Peak Assists in Nokia v. HTC Patent Litigation

By Quandary Peak Research

Nokia’s recent settlement with HTC over smartphone patents was widely reported in the media on Friday, resulting in the dismissal of all pending patent litigation worldwide between the two companies. Industry observers widely cited the outcome as an important step for Nokia in its effort to generate royalties from its patent portfolio.

Right up until the settlement was finalized, several of our software experts here at Quandary Peak were working earnestly with the attorneys at Desmarais LLP on behalf of Nokia. Nenad Medvidovic, George Edwards, and Brad Ulrich were all down in the trenches, performing the painstaking work of documenting the technical evidence related to the patents-in-suit in the matters before the International Trade Commission and the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware. The patents disclosed inventions related to receiving push messages, downloading and installing apps over the network, video compression and encoding, protecting sensitive device configuration data, Bluetooth connectivity, calendar data management, and other technologies. The analysis by Quandary Peak included C++ source code review and Java source code review.

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17September

Edwards Tapped to Testify on GPS, Navigation, and Mapping Patents

By Quandary Peak Research

Dr. George Edwards, Quandary Peak’s resident guru of location-based mobile services, has been asked to testify as an expert witness in a lawsuit alleging infringement of a patent for “Method and System for Providing an Image Vector-Based Traffic Information.” The case, Porto Technology, Co., Ltd. et al. v. Cellco Partnership d/b/a Verizon Wireless, was filed Sept. 20, 2012 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Claim 1 of the patent at issue in the case, US Patent 6,233,518, discloses a method of providing an image-based traffic information in a region having at least one time-variant real entity. The method includes forming a traffic state map, transmitting the traffic state map to a user device, and displaying an image in accordance with the traffic state map on a screen of the user device. The patent was filed in 1999 by Heung-Soo Lee and was granted in 2001.

Edwards was engaged by plaintiff’s counsel Fox Rothschild, LLP, a national law firm with over five hundred attorneys. Edwards expects to draw on his knowledge, skills, and training in a variety of mobile platforms, including Android, iOS, Windows Mobile, Windows Phone, Qualcomm Brew, Palm Web OS, and RIM BlackBerry OS. Edwards’ conclusions will be based on a technical analysis of C++ and Java source code.

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21August

Protective Orders for Computer Source Code

By Brad Ulrich

Proprietary software source code produced as evidence during discovery is typically afforded stronger protection than other types of evidence. The restrictions on how the source code may be stored, transmitted, and viewed are specified by a protective order (PO). Perhaps in an effort to control costs, many attorneys wait until after the PO has been finalized to retain software analysts and expert witnesses. However, by engaging the experts before the protective order is finalized, counsel can receive important advice on how to negotiate terms that are most advantageous for each particular review, and end up saving time and money in the long run.

Each code review has its own unique set of variables that can vary widely from project to project, including the people involved, time and resource constraints, and software systems and devices. An expert’s job is to take into account the various technical and logistical considerations and suggest terms for a protective order that are advantageous and allow the team to meet the specific goals of the project. The expert can help attorneys pick their battles appropriately — for example, by pointing out that it would be worth accepting more stringent page limits on printed code in exchange for receiving printed code electronically in the form of searchable PDFs.

While there are many variables that will be unknown until the reviewer has a chance to see the code, the analyst should ideally have a strong technical background and experience with both the software systems involved and the source code review process in general such that they can make educated guesses.