 CodeSuite
CodeSuite is now being developed, maintained, and sold by
Software Analysis and Forensic Engineering Corporation. Please visit their website to download CodeSuite or to obtain licenses. |
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Detecting
Software IP Theft
A presentation about software forensics.
Plagiarism and theft are problems of growing concern
at universities and corporations. Intellectual
property theft may be purposeful to gain an unfair
advantage over a competitor, or it may be unintended
as when a programmer takes code from one project and
uses it in another project without first obtaining the
appropriate rights. This presentation discusses the
science of software forensics for accurately detecting
when software has been copied.
This talk was given
at the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the
Association for Computing Machinery on August 15,
2018. |
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Protecting and Tracking
Confidential Materials
An article about keeping confidential materials. When you send your confidential
material to an outside expert, do you know how it is
handled and what steps are taken to protect it?
Through our years of working on numerous high tech
intellectual property disputes, we have developed
several policies that we follow to protect our
client’s valuable confidential materials. We describe
these polices and practices in this article.
Article originally published
in Intellectual Property Today magazine,
May 2012. |
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Drawing Accurate Forensic
Conclusions
An overview of software forensics. Although one party to a case usually
hires software forensics experts, it is our role to be
neutral and present only the facts. While the facts
can be presented in the best light for the client, we
must not change the facts to support a client, no
matter how much pressure there is to do so. The only
way justice can be served is if we present the facts
and correct any mistakes that we make. We are not
hired to argue in favour of a client; that is the
attorney’s role. We are hired only to perform forensic
analysis and report our findings.
Article originally published
in Digital Forensics magazine,
February 2016. |
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The Case of
the Arrogant Expert
An article about a case where egos got in the way. Bob Zeidman was an expert on an
intellectual property litigation over a patent for a
simple but clever transistor circuit. His client was
a small company and the accused infringer was a very
large company that had hired an experienced and
well-respected expert. This is an article about
arrogance on the part of that expert and his client's
attorneys and executives, and how that helped bring
down their case.
Article originally published
in Intellectual Property Today magazine,
February 2012. |
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Measuring Whitespace Patterns
in Computer Source Code as an Indication of Plagiarism
An article for attorneys on using whitespace
patterns in source code as an indicator of software
copying. There are several different
methods of comparing source code from different
programs to find copying. Perhaps the most common
method is source code correlation, which involves
comparing source code statements, comments, strings,
identifiers, and instruction sequences independently.
However, there are anecdotes about the use of
whitespace patterns in code. Experts have presented
this analysis in court, but is it a valid argument?
This article summarizes a study we did to show that
this type of analysis does not work.
Article originally published
in Intellectual Property Today magazine,
October 2010. |
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Measuring Whitespace Patterns As An Indication Of Plagiarism
A research paper on plagiarism detection. There are several different methods of comparing source code from different programs to find copying. Perhaps the most common method is comparing source code statements, comments, strings, identifiers, and instruction sequences. However, there are anecdotes about the use of whitespace patterns in code. These virtually invisible patterns of spaces and tabs have been used in litigation to imply copying, but no formal study has been performed that shows that these patterns can actually identify copied code. This paper presents a detailed study of whitespace patterns and the uniqueness of these patterns in different programs.
Paper given at the ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law, May 20, 2010. |
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Measuring Changes in Software IP
An article for attorneys on how to measure changes
in software IP over time. Transfer pricing cases in
particular require a determination about how the
software for a particular program has changed over time as new
versions are released. The factors that go into
determining software value are numerous and varied,
including the amount of effort involved in developing
the code, amount of time debugging the code, the
complexity of the code, the degree of expertise
required, the selling price of the finished program,
and the size of the market for the final product. In
this article, we describe a court-accepted,
quantitative method that is particularly useful for
transfer pricing cases.
Article originally published
in Intellectual Property Today magazine,
June 2009. |
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Measuring Software Evolution with Changing Lines of Code
A research paper on measuring changes in software IP
over time. A standard method for
quantitatively measuring the evolution of software and
the intellectual property it represents is needed.
Traditionally, the evolution of software systems has
been subjectively measured by counting the addition of
new architectural elements or by comparing source code
metrics. This paper demonstrates a method for
measuring the evolution of source code by analyzing
the number of lines of code that have been modified,
added, or remain through subsequent versions.
Paper given at the 24th International Conference
on Computers and Their Applications (CATA-2009). |
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What, Exactly, is Software Trade Secret Theft?
An article for attorneys on defining and detecting
software trade secret theft. Software source code correlation
and the iterative process that was developed to detect
software source code copying can also be used make an
initial determination whether software trade secret
theft has occurred. This article describes how that
can be done.
Article originally published
in Intellectual Property Today magazine,
March 2008. |
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Iterative Filtering of Retrieved Information to Increase Relevance
A research paper on search technology. Efforts have been underway for years to find more effective ways to retrieve information from large knowledge domains. This effort is now being driven particularly by the Internet and the vast amount of information that is available to unsophisticated users. In the early days of the Internet, some effort involved allowing users to enter Boolean equations of search terms into search engines, for example, rather than just a list of keywords. More recently, effort has focused on understanding a user’s desires from past search histories in order to narrow searches. Also there has been much effort to improve the ranking of results based on some measure of relevancy. This paper discusses using iterative filtering of retrieved information to focus in on useful information. This work was done for finding source code correlation and the author extends his findings to Internet searching and e-commerce. The paper presents specific information about a particular filtering application and then generalizes it to other forms of information retrieval.
Paper given at the 11th World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics, July 11, 2007. |
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What, Exactly, is Software Plagiarism?
An article for attorneys on defining and
detecting software plagiarism. Determining whether computer
software was copied has often been a subjective
process without standards. This article describes a
quantitative measure of source code correlation
combined with an iterative filtering process to
eliminate reasons for correlation that are not due to
copying. What is left is copied code. This process has
been used successfully over 80 times in litigation.
Article originally published
in Intellectual Property Today magazine,
February 2007. |
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Zeidman expert report on alleged election fraud
A report for Mike Lindell's Election
Fraud Challenge. In July 2021, My Pillow
founder and CEO Mke Lindell announced the
Cyber Symposium to be held in Sioux Falls, South
Dakota for three days in August to present his proof
of election fraud to invited attendees including
technical experts in forensics. He offered a $5
million prize to anyone who could prove that that his
evidence was wrong. This is the report that Bob
Zeidman submitted to claim the prize.
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The People's
Computer Company Newsletters:
The People's Computer Company
was founded and produced by Dennis Allison, Bob
Albrecht and George Firedrake in Menlo Park,
California in the early 1970s. When I (Bob Zeidman)
was a young teenager in middle school in Philadelphia,
this newsletter showed me that computer programming
was not only intellectually challenging, but that it
could be fun and offbeat, and that there were lots of
other programmers from whom I could learn. and share
ideas. Skimming through, you may see my articles and
letters that I contributed. It seems that I may be one
of the few people on the planet who kept copies of the
tabloid sized newsletter on cheap, flimsy newspaper.
The PCC newsletter later morphed into People's
Computers magazine and later again into Recreational
Computing magazine. Thanks go to Erik Klein for
sharing his copies of these later editions for
scanning. Thanks also go to the
Computer
History Museum for their contribution of a few
early issues that I was missing. Rare issue Volume 1
No. 5 came from the
Stanford Digital Repository. And many thanks to
Bruce Damer who runs the
DigiBarn Computer Museum and
who seems to have the only copy of Volume 2 No. 2 in
existence. Thanks also to Mike Naberezny who scanned it for the collection.
The links are
to large zip files of PDFs. The OCR versions are lower
resolution.
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Star Trek
Convention, Las Vegas 2022
Download these presentations from the
2022 Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas.
Patents in Star Trek
Patents in the Future |
Star Trek
Convention, Las Vegas 2023
Download these presentations from the
2023 Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas.
Artificial Intelligence, Intellectual Property, and
Star Trek
How to Patent Your Invention |
Star Trek
Convention, Las Vegas 2024
Download these presentations from the
2024 Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas.
The Real and Unreal Threats of Artificial Inteligence
How to Patent Your Invention |
Star Trek
Convention, Las Vegas 2025
Download these presentations from the
2025 Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas.
From Nomad to the EMH Doctor - The Real and Unreal Threats of Artificial Inteligence
Dr. Soong and How to Patent Your Invention |
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Business Forms Some people have asked us to provide
generic nondisclosure agreements, so here are the ones
we've used for years. Feel free to take them and use
them for your own business needs. The NDA protects
your intellectual property while the mutual NDA
protects both parties' intellectual property.
Non-disclosure Agreement
(NDA)
Mutual nondisclosure agreement (NDA) |
