When using the RPG, an expert selects the type of case, type of report, types of technologies involved, types of tools used, and expert background profiles from a GUI. Then a Microsoft Word draft report is generated that includes all of the selected generic information intermixed with blank sections where case-specific information should be filled in manually.
Currently, many experts either dig through their prior works to find specific descriptions or write them from scratch each time. Maintaining a library of generic report elements is a challenge, especially when multiple experts are involved. RPG acts as a version control system between multiple experts who can upload and download detailed descriptions of experts, technologies, and tools from a central server. The reports are generated according to specific formats, so an entire team of experts can easily produce reports that are consistently formatted with the most up-to-date descriptions.
RPG also keeps synced descriptions of CodeSuite, so it can include the most up-to-date descriptions and pricing of the tools without having to search the S.A.F.E. website or CodeSuite help files.
If you’re interested in trying out RPG, contact our Sales Department.
]]>You’re probably wondering what is the difference between CodeMeasure and CodeCLOC. CodeMeasure is a simple, inexpensive program for generating the CLOC measurement statistics for multiple versions of a program. CodeCLOC, intended for litigation, compares only two versions of code but produces a detailed database of results that can be further filtered and analyzed using CodeSuite or your own custom tools. The results from CodeCLOC can be presented in court and the CodeCLOC database can be presented to the opposing party for verification.
CodeSuite 4.0 also has a few other nice features including a revamped user interface. There’s also a new function to generate statistics from any CodeSuite database and the command line interface has been enhanced for integrating with other programs. CodeSuite 4.0 is available for download here and can be purchased on a term license or project basis. CodeCLOC is priced at $20 per megabyte. A one year term license for CodeSuite is $100,000.
]]>This always sounded intriguing, but I wondered whether anyone had ever tested this theory. We could find no articles or papers on the subject, except for one inconclusive paper, and I dreaded to think that some programmer was convicted based on an untested theory. I decided to have my consulting company, Zeidman Consulting, do some carefully controlled research. If the results turned out well, SAFE Corporation would add whitespace pattern algorithms to CodeSuite to further enhance its ability to detect copying.
Our results were published in a paper entitled Measuring Whitespace Patterns as an Indication of Plagiarism that was recently presented at the ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law. Our results are summarized in the final paragraph:
This whitespace pattern matching method can be used to focus a search for evidence of similarity or copying, but this method cannot stand by itself.
What we discovered is that even very different files have often have similar whitespace patterns. At Zeidman Consulting we’ve used whitespace patterns to confirm copying that was already detected through the use of CodeMatch to find correlated programming elements. In those cases, the whitespace patterns offered further confidence in our findings and in some cases showed which program had been developed first. For a copy of the paper, email us at info@SAFE-corp.biz.
Our next research project is to look at sequences of whitespace within files. Maybe there we’ll find some clues to copying. But for now our results show that whitespace patterns without any other evidence should not be used to determine that copying occurred.
]]>The North Face didn’t get the joke. Their lawyers scheduled a deposition of Winkelmann’s father, James Winkelmann Sr. That didn’t go too well. It turns out that Winkelmann Sr. was once a partner at the St. Louis brokerage firm of HFI Securities where partner Don Weir Jr. pleaded guilty a year ago to charges he stole more than $10 million from clients (Winkelmann was never implicated in any wrongdoing).
I suggest you download the reply and the deposition when you want to have a good laugh at the expense of the legal system. The reply is pretty sarcastic and it’s not clear to me who it’s supposed to appeal to (except readers like us, but not necessarily the judge). The deposition reads like a Marx Brothers skit and is every bit as funny. Litigation has never been so much fun.
]]>Actually no. The real inventors of the digital computer were physics professor John Atanasoff and his student Clifford Berry who created the first digital computer in a laboratory at Iowa State University. The ABC (“Atanasoff-Berry Computer“) was built in 1939, yet by the time of ENIAC’s introduction to the world, the ABC had been forgotten. What had happened? World War II broke out and the University of Iowa as well as Atanasoff and Berry simply didn’t realize the power of what they had created. Atanasoff was called up by the Navy to do physics research, eventually participating in the atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll.
When Atanasoff returned to Iowa state he found that his invention was gone to make room for other equipment—because the ABC was built piece-by-piece in the laboratory, it was too big to move out and so it had to be dismantled. Iowa State had decided that a patent was too expensive and so never filed one. John Atanasoff went on to gain recognition for a number of inventions involving physics, but the ABC was mostly forgotten.
In the 1970s there were a handful of companies that saw the great potential in the electronic computer. Sperry Rand Corporation, which was formed through a series of mergers and acquisitions including the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation, held U.S. Patent 3,120,606 for the digital computer. In 1973, Sperry Rand sued Honeywell, Inc. and Honeywell reciprocated. Thus began one of the most important intellectual property cases in history.
During the research for this case, Honeywell found out about John Atanasoff and the ABC, which became pivotal information. The case was tried for 7 months after which Judge Earl R. Larson handed down his decision that stated, among other things, that the Eckert-Mauchly patent was invalid.
Some people have disputed this finding, arguing that this was a “legal” finding or a “loophole” or that a lawyer or a judge simply couldn’t understand the complex engineering issues involved. Here’s my take on this.
In fact, it became clear that Mauchly and Eckert attempted to claim much more credit than they deserved and tried to deny credit to others. They had actually greatly improved on Atanasoff’s original design. Had Eckert and Mauchly been more humble, had they added Atanasoff’s name to their patent, had they patented their own improvements instead of the entire invention, they may have given Sperry Rand the most powerful IP in technology history. Instead the invention of the computer entered the public domain without restriction, and the rest is history…
For a good book on the subject, read The First Electronic Computer: The Atanasoff Story by Alice R. Burks and Arthur W. Burks.
]]>The likeability of the expert witnesses was found to be significantly related to the jurors’ perception of their trustworthiness, but not to their displays of confidence or knowledge or to the mock jurors’ sentencing decisions.
Reading the paper doesn’t make it a whole lot clearer for me, and I think their mock trial setup is a bit contrived, particularly since the jury consisted of psychology students, a demographic that you’d be unlikely to find on a real jury. Also there were only two expert witnesses for the comparison. To their credit, they discuss these potential shortcomings. I do think, however, that the paper points out something (that may have already been obvious)—there is more to being an expert witness than just being correct. Personality and presentation are strong factors.
On the other hand, I feel that this subjective aspect should be minimized. Experts need standards and measurable quantities whenever possible. Before I began developing the concept of source code correlation, the way software copyright infringement and trade secret theft cases were resolved was to have two experts give contrary opinions based on their years of experience. The judge or jury would tend to get lost in the technical details, a strategy purposely employed by some experts and attorneys, and a judgment would depend on which expert appeared more credible.
Instead, I decided to expand the field of software forensics and made it my goal to bring as much credibility to the field as DNA analysis, another very complex process that is well accepted in modern courts. I still believe that an expert’s credibility and likeability will always be factors in IP litigation, but that the emergence of source code correlation and object code correlation provide standard measures that bring a great deal of objectivity to a lawsuit’s outcome.
]]>