OSTA Expert Witness Services

OSTA, a technology and management consulting firm, offers expert witness services in legal disputes, court battles and arbitrations that involve the use and/or development of computer software. We have written "expert" reports, given depositions, and testified at arbitration hearings as well as at court trials.

Services Offered

Dr. Heinz Lycklama , the principal computer consultant in OSTA, offers the following expert witness services:

• Trade secret misappropriation analysis - Suppliers gain competitive advantage through the use of trade secrets in developing their products. We analyze the validity of a trade secret and determine whether it has been misappropriated by another vendor. This requires deep familiarity with the computer software industry on our part.
• Software copyright infringement analysis - Computer program source code is compiled into executable object code that runs on a computer. A supplier protects the source code, the user interface and the documentation of a program by copyrighting them. We analyze software systems for similarities and/or derivation to establish whether copyright infringement occurred.
• Software patent claim/infringement analysis - We analyze the validity of patent claims by examining the originality, utility, novelty and/or non-obviousness of the claims. We also do detailed patent claim analysis, prior art research, and technical analysis of the software products involved in a patent dispute to determine whether infringement has occurred.
• Prior art research - Literature, and the product itself, is examined for products which exhibit some of the features and functions described by the patent claims. The validity of the patent claims is determined by careful and selective research.
• Forensic software analysis - Computer disks and backup tapes often contain important information that is crucial to establishing whether, when and how certain events occurred. Preserving and analyzing computer-based evidence can often determine the outcome of a case.
• Software development analysis - There are well-established industry guidelines for developing software products. We analyze the development methodology used by suppliers to determine whether they meet these guidelines and whether the estimated development effort is reasonable.
• Technology white papers, tutorials and presentations - Customized material is prepared about our areas of expertise, tailored to the needs of the case and the audience. We help reduce complex technical topics to simple terms for the legal profession and others involved in the case.
• Litigation support - We offer expert advice in computer-related litigation cases by evaluating the technical merits of the case, researching technical issues in depth, presenting opinions on technical questions, analyzing technically-oriented testimony from the opposing side, and advising on cross examination strategy and questions. If you need a more complete set of litigation support services, or if you need arbitration support services, or dispute remediation services, please refer to the description of services offered by our partner, Systems Management Resources .

We maintain computers on site running (or capable of running) various flavors of the UNIX operating system, Windows NT and Windows 95. The Microsoft Office suite and the Microsoft BackOffice suite are run on Windows 95 and Windows NT, respectively. Customer computer hardware and software is used when required by a case.

Areas of Expertise

With 30+ years of experience in software research and development, Dr. Heinz Lycklama has developed expertise in the following software areas:

• Operating systems - Developed UNIX-based operating systems at Bell Telephone Laboratories. Has more than 28 years of experience with various flavors of the UNIX operating system (real-time, general purpose, and stand-alone) and has worked with Windows NT and Windows 95 for the last five years.
• File systems - Developed UNIX-based file systems, suitable for general-purpose and real-time applications. Familiar with many different UNIX-based file systems as well as Microsoft file systems.
• Systems/network management - Developed and used UNIX-based systems management tools. Familiar with the major systems management frameworks and the various categories of plug-in tools used for UNIX-based and Windows NT systems. Developed and presented courses on systems and network management.
• Middleware - Performed various analyses of middleware technologies such as Remote Procedure Calls (RPC), messaging, Object-Oriented middleware, OLTP and distributed services such as directories, naming and security.
• Systems architecture - Analyzed and developed systems architectures for distributed computing platforms and telecommunications products.
• Computer programming - Wrote tens of thousands of lines of computer programs in languages such as Fortran, assembler and C. These programs comprised part of the operating system, operating system utilities and systems applications.
• Internet services - Used the Internet and its services for more than 20 years. Developed web pages for multiple projects.
• Software development - Developed and used the latest tools to write, debug and manage source code for multiple products. Managed large distributed software development projects.
• Standards - Initiated and managed the development of the early POSIX standards in UniForum. Coordinated and played a key role in transitioning these standards efforts to the IEEE using their formal standards development procedures.

Expert Witness Projects

Some of the cases in which Dr. Heinz Lycklama served as an expert witness include the following:

• Expert Witness in Patent Infringement Case - An analysis was performed to determine whether the CICS emulation product introduced by the defendant infringed on some patents awarded to the plaintiff.
• Expert Witness in Government Award Protest - We represented the protesting party in a multi-million dollar award by the U.S. Coast Guard to Unisys for computers running the Windows NT operating system. The major protest issue that was analyzed, and on which an expert opinion was given, was that of POSIX compliance. Dr. Lycklama was also admitted as an expert in operating systems in this case.
• Expert Witness in Systems Liability Case - An analysis was performed to determine whether the product development procedures used by a vendor met industry standards, and whether the operating system used by a customer was responsible for problems perceived by the customer.
• Expert Witness in Software Maintenance Contract Dispute Case - We represented the defendant in a dispute in which the plaintiff claimed that all of its business data was lost as a result of actions taken by the computer vendor. Forensic software analysis techniques were used to determine whether the business data was appropriately recovered.

Brief descriptions of other projects performed by OSTA can be found in OSTA Projects . References are available upon request.

Heinz Lycklama - heinz@osta.com
Last modified:  April 23, 2003