Software Patent and Trade Secret Expert Witness

Brooks Hilliard has extensive experience consulting on and testifying about business-oriented software such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Supply Chain Management (SCM) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications.

He has been engaged as a consulting and testifying witness in more than 15 patent infringement and trade secret misappropriation cases, including matters relating to business software, business methods, computer hardware and confidential business knowledge/information. Examples include:

• Testified in a patent matter, defending against invalidity allegations relating to anticipation and obviousness assertions, including more than 50 systems and methods claims for eight alleged prior art systems [Supply Chain Management (SCM) software].
• Prepared declaration in a patent reexamination supporting validity of SCM software patents.
• Produced a report analyzing “look and feel” and databases structure similarities to determine whether one business software system was derived from a competing system written in a different programming language. A court-ordered neutral assignment engaged by and reporting jointly to all parties to the dispute.  Settled by joint agreement between the parties based on report conclusions.
• Tested and analyzed functionality of two software packages performing military equipment logistics applications, to determine whether one was derived from the other (settled prior to testimony).
• Analyzed issues in a trade secret matter relating to whether allegedly proprietary information used by an equipment maintenance company to train technicians was publicly-available (settled prior to testimony).
• Testified in a trade secret matter relating to whether a hardware manufacturer had created a product itself, or copied the design disclosed to it by an inventor under an agreement prohibiting such copying.
• Analyzed issues in a copyright matter relating to whether one company had misappropriated the Internet web site code of another (settled prior to testimony).

These engagements have involved both consulting and testifying expert services covering the complete range of patent, copyright and trade secret issues. Project efforts have included forensic investigation, preparation of opinions and declarations, deposition testimony, trial and arbitration testimony, assistance in settlement negotiations, and assistance in patent reexaminations.

Attorney references and case captions are available on request.