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How to prove plagiarism in a particular software?

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(@yunus)
Posts: 178
Estimable Member
Topic starter
 

In a case, an accountancy software developer complains that another developer has plagiarised his software -with some changes in interface and menus- and produced a so-called a new accountancy software under another name. The other developer says he has developed the software by himself and it is original and that his software is not the same as that of the complainant's. Further he says the both software have similar functions because both sofware are accountancy software.

This could seem like a regular plagiarism case, however, it is not a song, nor a book but thousands of lines of codes in a programming language.

In this case, the interface, the menus and the codes could be compared in order to find out if they are really identical or not. But what if the suspect copied only some code lines or modules rather than the all of the codes? To what extent can one developer be inspired from another one's and to what extent he can copy?

Any thoughts on that?

 
Posted : 15/03/2011 7:45 pm
(@joethomas)
Posts: 65
Trusted Member
 

You'd have to look at the source code. If it was plagiarized then it is likely that the names of the variables would be the same and many of the functions identical. That would be enough to prove plagiarism. Doing any kind of comparison without the source code would be meaningless, there are thousands of different ways a programmer could come up with an almost identical looking interface.

 
Posted : 15/03/2011 7:52 pm
jhup
 jhup
(@jhup)
Posts: 1442
Noble Member
 

Get both sides' source code and use something like WinDiff or WinMerge.

 
Posted : 15/03/2011 7:59 pm
(@kovar)
Posts: 805
Prominent Member
 

Greetings,

There are people who specialize in source code analysis for cases like this. I can refer you to one if you'd like.

-David

 
Posted : 15/03/2011 8:05 pm
(@armresl)
Posts: 1011
Noble Member
 

Code analysis is a whole other section of work and requires someone who has a much different skillset (I was just reading that skillset will be one word in the upcoming dictionary so I started early)

Much like you have people who do intrusion work, incident response, or forensic accounting, you need a very good coder and someone who is familiar with that particular language of code.

GL

 
Posted : 15/03/2011 9:22 pm
(@seanmcl)
Posts: 700
Honorable Member
 

Plagiarism describes the literal copying of a work. There is not much to prove in the case of pure plagiarism, except that the original work was protectable under copyright laws.

Most allegations of software copyright infringement involve some degree of non-literal copying for which the laws vary from country to country.

Therefore a lot depends upon the laws regarding copyright as they apply in your jurisdiction.

We were, recently, involved in a software copyright infringement case in the US. As the alleged "copy" was written in a different language from the alleged source (non-literal copy), we needed to use the Abstraction-Filtration-Comparison model in order to determine if there were sufficient similarities to argue that the alleged copy was a derivative.

In addtion, in the US, the mere fact that B can be shown to have been copied or derived from A is not sufficient to proving copyright infringement. For example, if what A and B describe is obvious to the point that one would never think to do something in another way, then the "original" may not be protectable under the laws of your jurisdiction.

The "classic" example is film noir, where a black limosine coming out of a dimly lit alley is used to create suspense. That device is so well known that no one could argue that a film that uses it violates the copyright of another film. (Alfred Hitchcock attempted to demonstrate that none of those cliches were necessary to good suspense in the famous crop duster scene from North By Northwest. In that scene, an open field in daylight was substituted for a dimly lit city street, the black limo turned out to be someone being dropped off to catch the bus and a crop duster became the black limo).

Bottom line, look at the laws of the jurisdiction in which the case is to be prosecuted as this will tell you what you will need to support an allegation of software copyright infringement.

 
Posted : 15/03/2011 9:44 pm
(@zeidman)
Posts: 1
New Member
 

My software company, Software Analysis and Forensic Engineering, creates tools for finding software plagiarism and we provide on-line or in-person training. Check out www.SAFE-corp.biz. My consulting company, Zeidman Consulting, specializes in analyzing code for IP litigation. Check out www.ZeidmanConsulting.com.

Regards,
Bob Zeidman

 
Posted : 16/03/2011 8:23 pm
(@ranathomson)
Posts: 1
New Member
 

I think you would need to know the particular source text that you believe it was modified from. In that case, demonstrating identical structure ought to be sufficient a sentence-by-sentence comparison ought to show convincingly that the exact same ideas have been used in the same order.

 
Posted : 06/07/2018 7:26 am
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