Tag Archives: transfer pricing

Be a Pioneer in the Field of Software Forensics

I hope you’re all aware of my book The Software IP Detective’s Handbook: Measurement, Comparison, and Infringement Detection. It’s the first book on Software Forensics, a field that I pioneered at Software Analysis and Forensic Engineering and Zeidman Consulting. Whereas Digital Forensics deals with bits and files, without any detailed knowledge of the meaning of the data, Software Forensics deals with analysis of software using detailed knowledge of its syntax and functionality to perform analysis to find stolen code and stolen trade secrets. The algorithms described in the book have been used in many court cases. The book also describes algorithms for measuring software evolution, particularly as it relates to IP changes.

If you are a teacher, this is a great time to incorporate the materials in the book into your courses on software development, intellectual property law, business management, and computer science. There’s something for everyone in the various chapters of the book. Your students and you will be at the forefront of an important and very new field of study.

If you’re interested, please contact me.

The Software IP Detective’s Handbook

Leave a comment

My book on software intellectual property, a labor of love (and hate) for the last two years, has just been published by Prentice-Hall. The book is intended for several different audiences including computer scientists, computer programmers, business managers, lawyers, engineering consultants, expert witnesses, and high-tech entrepreneurs. Some chapters give easy-to-understand explanations of intellectual property concepts including copyrights, patents, and trade secrets. Other chapters are highly mathematical treatments describing quantitative ways of comparing and measuring software and software IP. The first chapter of the book outlines which chapters are most important for the different audiences.

Overall the book covers the following topics:

  • Key concepts of software intellectual property
  • Comparing and correlating source code for signs of theft or infringement
  • Uncovering signs of copying in object code when source code is inaccessible
  • Tracking malware and third-party code in applications
  • Using software clean rooms to avoid IP infringement
  • Understanding IP issues associated with patents, open source, and DMCA

You can purchase your copy from Amazon.com here.

CodeMeasure is now free

Leave a comment

You can now run CodeMeasure to graph the growth of your software project development effort over multiple versions of the software. CodeMeasure uses the Changing Lines of Code (CLOC) method to calculate the growth. The graph that CodeMeasure produces illustrates various CLOC measurements. An example is shown below.

Now there is a caveat (we do need to make a profit after all). You can examine the graph and take a screen shot of it, but you can’t save the results to a spreadsheet without a paid license. The good news is that a license is only $500 for a 1-year unlimited license. You can download CodeMeasure here and purchase a license here. This way you get to try out CodeMeasure and see how the results can help you measure your software development effort.

CodeCLOC for software transfer pricing cases

Leave a comment

Last month we announced CodeMeasure, our new standalone tool for measuring software growth. This month we announced the release of CodeSuite 4.0 that includes CodeCLOC for measuring how software evolves across versions of code. CodeCLOC uses the same algorithms that were implemented in CodeMeasure and that were developed for the landmark software transfer pricing case Symantec v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue.

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.