Utility Litigation Monthly Watchdog Report

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eComp Consultants initiates the distribution of a monthly litigation alert bulletin to utility company executives and legal counsel within the energy sector of the utility industry. The bulletin, entitled Utility Litigation Alert, provides timely information on litigation activity occurring throughout the industry involving intellectual property associated with technology relating to smart grid initiatives and web-based customer interactions. It also serves as early warning as to potential risks of such litigation causing negative impacts to project initiatives.

See our Consulting Service page to learn about eComp’s Risk Assessment service which describes proactive ways to make sure your company is not infringing others’ IP rights, and to potentially avoid a lawsuit.

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eComp Consultants provided strategic piece in Datamaxx Applied Technologies v Computer Projects of Illinois, Inc Software Copyright Infringement litigation

Pennington, Moore, Wilkinson, Bell & Dunbar retained expert witness consultants Jan Kostyun and Heather Diaz as consulting and testifying experts in connection with the determination of software copyright infringement on behalf of Datamaxx Applied Technologies, a leading provider of software used by federal, state and local law enforcement and criminal justice agencies. The technology in this case related to Internet based Law Enforcement Products with robust user interfaces and diverse data exchanges and interfaces.

The Plaintiff, Datamaxx suspected that their valuable software product was copied by its previous partner and now competing vendor, CPI. eComp Consultants analysis in this case involved the comparison of the competitor’s operational software, along with comprehension and elimination of many standard procedures dictated by the law enforcement industry. eComp used the standard Whelan Test (from Whelan v Jaslow) and Abstraction, Filtration, Comparison Test (aka Altai test, from Computer Associates v Altai) methodologies to provide a clear and compelling case to identify many key areas of the accused software that were ‘reengineered’ from the Plaintiff’s software. In fact, we identified a total of 59 program elements to be virtually identical between Datamaxx’s Omnixx and CPI OpenFox products.

J. Wiley Horton, partner at Pennington, Moore, Wilkinson, Bell & Dunbar stated “Mr. Kostyun provided significant support for our case in the identification of protectable software elements using a variety of the latest identification methods. He provided an excellent and compelling expert report, which was predicated on the use of the Abstraction Filtration-Comparison test, as well as a number of other convincing software comparison techniques. His expert report was a strategic piece of our case that resulted in a successful outcome for our client.”

eComp Consultants is proud to be part of the team that brought this case to a successful outcome for Datamaxx. If you would like more information about our services and how we can support your litigation efforts, please contact Norm Tanguay at 813-447-1014.