Source Code Expert Witness
We assist attorneys with source code analysis in matters involving breach of contract, trade secret misappropriation, patent infringement, and copyright violations. Our source code expert witness is well-versed in all aspects of source code review. We take a two-pronged approach, combining automated tools to facilitate the review process with manual analysis to validate the results. Our methodology includes both dynamic and static analysis tools to examine software systems. Backed by decades of software development experience, we help counsel understand complex codebases and uncover the technical facts critical to the case.
Our experts have previously offered testimony as source code expert witness, Java expert witness, C++ expert witness, C expert witness, JavaScript expert witness, and HTML expert witness.
We have experience with all aspects of source code review, including:
- Abstraction Filtration Comparison
- Abstract Syntax Tree, Call Graph, Type System
- Dynamic Analysis, Static Analysis, Hybrid Analysis
- Code quality metrics, Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI)
- Beyond Compare, PowerGrep, Understand by ScieTools, SonarQube
- Architecture recovery, design recovery, UML, etc.
- Programming languages: Java, JavaScript, C, C++, C#, Objective C, Python, Visual Basic, ASP, JSP, Swift
- Frameworks: Spring, React, AngularJS, Vue, etc.
- Databases: SQL, Oracle, MySQL, MongoDB
- Cost and schedule estimation methods: COCOMO, SEER-SEM, etc.
A variety of tools are available that can greatly aid an expert in identification of relevant pieces of code to a litigation matter in a complex software system.
One category of such tools deal with search. When dealing with a very large software system, potentially consisting of thousands or millions of lines of code, having access to a proper search tool, such as PowerGrep, is essential for effectively finding the relevant pieces of code.
Another category of tools that is often handy is code comparison tools, such as BeyondCompare. These types of tools allow an expert to quickly compare source code among files, making it extremely effective to identify cases of literal copying.
Despite the importance of the aforementioned tools, an expert often needs to also manually analyze the results produced by tools to evaluate their relevance to the issues in a case.
Generally speaking software analysis tools fall under two categories: static and dynamic.
Static analysis evaluates the source code of a software system without executing it. The input to a static analysis tool is the source code of the software. These tools have a number of advantages that make them suitable to a variety of software forensic tasks. An advantage of static analysis tool is its ability to be complete, i.e., capable of validating certain property in the entire code base. Static analysis tools, however, tend to suffer from soundness, i.e., have false positives. This is because static analysis tools tend to over-approximate the behavior of code.
Unlike static analysis tools, dynamic analysis tools execute the software. As a result, dynamic analysis tools are often sound, meaning that they do not produce false positives. However, dynamic analysis tools tend to be incomplete, meaning that they cannot be used to rule out the presence of a property in the software. The most common form of dynamic analysis is software testing.
While automated tools can greatly improve the productivity of an expert in identifying relevant pieces of code, they are typically not sufficient for an expert to confidently opine in a litigation matter. An expert usually cannot blindly accept the results produced by a tool without further manual verification.
Tools are typically good at identification of literal copying or searching for specific keywords. But many litigation matters require the expert to abstract from the low-level trivial differences in the code to arrive at a more abstract representation. For instance, in copyright matters, an expert is often expected to conduct what is known as the Abstraction-Filteration-Comparison test.
In certain cases, the issues revolve around a particular architecture for software. In such cases, the expert needs to recover the architecture of software systems that are in dispute from their implementation artifacts to then be able to evaluate any similarities between them.
Meet Our Experts
Source Code Expert Witness
At Cyberonix, our source code expert witnesses possess robust academic credentials and extensive industry experience, ensuring they deliver impartial and knowledgeable analyses in software-related disputes. We specialize in offering expert witness consulting services tailored to address even the most intricate litigation challenges. Our source code expert witness consultants have provided expert opinions across diverse litigation matters, including patent disputes, trade secret infringements, copyright issues, breach of contract cases, and class action lawsuits. Our comprehensive range of services encompasses everything from source code analysis to expert report preparation and the delivery of compelling expert testimony during depositions and trials.
