Radical Software & Consulting Inc.
Providing the Best Solution
Expert Witness  Related to Theft of Intellectual Property

  • Engaged by        : Defense (Stole Rives)

  • Result                : Defense granted Summary Judgement

  • Subject Matter  : Software used in large prescription  
                                            environments.

    Mr. Allport was engaged by the defense in a case where the
    owner of a software company accused one of the founders of
    the firm, several ex-employees and consultants of steeling the
    source code and designs for a software product.

    The software in question was use to operate the machines
    that dispense medications in large institutions such as
    hospitals and jails.

    Mr. Allport was retained to aid in this process of proving the
    plaintiff's accusations had no basis in truth.

    To this end the tasks included:

  • An important part of the process was to examine: any
    possible motif and opportunity of the people at the
    plaintiff's software firm to do what they were accused of.

  • Reviewing depositions given previously by the
    defendants.

  • Interview the defendants on the plans and processes
    used to create the application in question. This included
    talking to the developers and understanding the
    methodologies used to create the application in a
    relatively short time.

  • Mr.Allport has to assess the abilities of the personnel
    being accessed of stealing code to actual take it out of
    the plaintiff's location or from one of the plaintiff's client
    sites. Mr. Allport found that the personnel that had
    access to all of these locations did not have the skill
    sets steal code.

  • Understand how the defendants system worked versus
    the processing methods used by the plaintiff's
    application.

  • Review documentation provided by the defendants
    detailing the application design, programming tools etc.

  • Mr. Allport also used his own experience and associated
    tracts on rapid application development to examine the
    developer resources and level of knowledge of what the
    application was required to do.

  • Examining the security protocols at the plaintiff's
    location and those at the plaintiff's clients to see if the
    defendants code have over-ridden protocols to steal
    code and other information. After examining all possible
    scenarios Mr. Allport was sure that the defendants had
    no opportunity to steal code.
  • As to motif: the defendants were going in a different
    business direct to the plaintiff's company and therefore
    had no need for the plaintiff's code.

    When all the above tasks were completed Mr. Allport created a
    report examining all of the information and concluded that it
    was not possible for the defendants to have done what they
    were accused of. The attorney included this in the Summary
    Judgement application to the court. The case against the
    defendants was dismissed.