When a legal case is argued in front of a jury, both sides’ experts present their facts and the truth becomes apparent, right? Of course not–if it were that simple, experts and lawyers would not have much to do.

If you have a research idea relating to code analysis, and you can use the SAFE tools, let us know. If your proposal passes our review process you’ll get free licenses to our tools, free support, and help getting your results published.

The precise language that legally defines a trade secret varies by jurisdiction, as do the particular types of information that are subject to trade secret protection. In the United States, different states have different trade secret laws. Most states have adopted the Uniform Trade Secrets Act, and those that don’t, have laws that only differ by subtle differences.

Copyrights protect expressions of ideas, but not the ideas themselves. Software can be reverse engineered to learn the ideas it embodies without violating the copyright, as long as the code is not copied and used commercially. The first lawsuit verdict that enforced this idea was Atari Games v. Nintendo in September 1992.

First, a copyright exists at the moment of creation. In other words, a work does not need to be published to have a copyright. The copyright does not need to be registered with the U.S. Copyright office. It is simply a right given to the person who created the work. The advantage of registering a copyright with the government is that you then have an official document proving your ownership, making it easier to win in court against someone who attempts to use your creation without your permission.

You have the source code from two different programs. You run them through CodeMatch and find high correlation numbers. Have you proven copying? Not yet. There are still a few steps to go through first.

SAFE has just released a new tool for comparing computer code to detect copyright infringement and trade secret theft. CodeCross™ finds traces of nonfunctional source code that have been copied from one program to another. According to Nikolaus Baer at Zeidman Consulting, a SAFE Corporation customer, “I suggested the concept of CodeCross after working on [...]

Welcome to my blog. I’m the founder and president of SAFE Corporation. I’ll be regularly updating this blog with useful and interesting information about software intellectual property and software analysis. I’ll be posting facts and current events relating to IP litigation, software plagiarism detection (also known as copyright infringement), trade secret theft, and patent infringement. [...]