Copyright Expert Witnesses

What is a copyright expert witness?

Copyright expert witness candidates typically have extensive experience in intellectual property law, and/or economic damages. Depending on the specifics of a copyright case, specialists such as a screenplay or publishing expert, software expert, product design expert, or music industry expert may be called upon to support a case. In a high-profile case, or litigation involving a significant financial stake, a law firm may require a testifying expert with prior expert witness testimony experience.

What types of cases require a copyright expert witness?

An intellectual property protection program stops others from using an owner’s intellectual property (e.g., trademark infringement, trade secret, trade dress, patent infringement, copyright) without a licensing agreement. Copyright law specifically protects authors of original creations such as poems, fictional characters, plays and other literary works, motion pictures, choreography, musical compositions, sound recordings, paintings, drawings, sculptures, photographs, computer software, radio and television broadcasts, and industrial designs. Copyright law encompasses both published and unpublished creations. There are many facets to copyright law, mostly due to the broad coverage areas and advancements in technology. The Music Modernization Act, as an example, was introduced in 2018 to address online music distribution and streaming services. In the U.S., reverse engineering of software is protected by the fair use exception in copyright law, and can be instrumental in software copyright cases. Landmark software copyright cases include the dispute over the Android operating system for smartphones in Google v. Oracle, the Apple II operating system in Apple Computer. v. Franklin Computer, and Microsystems v. Scandinavia Online which illustrated issues of reverse engineering and the need for copyright notices in code.

Litigation support by a copyright expert witness could include research, an expert report, expert opinion, expert testimony and/or testimony in court. An economic damages expert is often called on to opine on lost profits and damage analysis occurring from copyright infringement, from music to jewelry.

Copyright expert witness case examples

Cahn Litigation Services has placed copyright professionals to provide expert witness services for a wide variety of matters, including:

• Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA),
• software design,
• New York district court software code infringement case,
• reasonable royalty case filed in Los Angeles,
• Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA),
• unfair competition case involving copyright misuse,
• first sale doctrine case filed in New Jersey, and
• music distribution, among others.

The firm is skilled and experienced at identifying expert candidates to provide support for all types of intellectual property matters and is frequently called upon by law firm clients to locate specialists for copyright cases.

What litigation support work might a copyright expert witness be expected to perform?

Litigation support by a copyright expert witness could include research, authoring expert reports, providing expert opinions, expert testimony and/or testimony in court. An economic damages expert is often called on to opine on lost profits and damage analysis occurring from copyright infringement, from music to jewelry.

Cahn Litigation Services has the experience required to turn a search for a copyright expert witness around quickly, providing the right balance of expertise and testimony experience.

Related Disciplines

Copyright Expert Witness - Representative Bios

Please Note: All Cahn Litigation expert witness searches are customized to attorneys' precise specifications and preferences. Attorneys are encouraged to discuss search parameters with a Cahn search specialist.

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The below expert witness bios represent a small fraction of those Copyright experts known by Cahn Litigation Services. These bios are provided to give lawyers a sense of the Copyright landscape.

• Expert Witness #249167

  This expert is an Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Department at a University, specializing in Aesthetics, Ethics, and Metaphysics as they relate to Social & Political Philosophy and the Philosophy of Law. This expert's Ph.D. dissertation focused on copyright law and the problematic lack of foundation to copyright law in describing the nature of those entities that copyright is meant to protect. This expert's research focuses on issues arising from problems in intellectual property, including the ontological and ethical groundings of copyright, problems of fair use and "users' rights", and relations between philosophy and intellectual property law. This expert also actively researches independent issues in aesthetics, in practical and normative ethics, and in metaphysics. This expert has written several articles on the aesthetics of art and its relation to copyright law as well as the "Creative Act" and copyright.

  
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• Expert Witness #264944

  This expert is a nationally recognized entertainment and IP law scholar, and an expert witness and consultant in copyright, trademark, right of publicity and entertainment contract cases. This expert has many years of experience teaching and practicing Entertainment Law, Copyright Law, Publicity Rights, and International Entertainment Law.

  In addition to a consultancy, this expert is a professor teaching music law courses, including the topics of music revenue streams, the distinction between the composition copyright and the sound recording copyright, and the relationships between the players in the music industry (such as composers, performers, record labels, and music publishers). This expert holds a law degree, is a regular speaker speak at academic and law practitioner conferences, and is well-published in music copyright law.

  
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• Expert Witness #123933

  This expert has deep experience in jewelry design, copyright, manufacturing, and analysis. With many years of design and manufacturing expertise, this expert maintains an active copyright consulting practice for numerous artists and designers, and holds a number of design copyrights, personally.

  This expert's primary focus is on jewelry and although the bulk of this expert's business is centered around forensic appraisal this expert specializes on research to document design origins and influences, as well as the finite details of design, branding and marketing.

  This expert is has been an expert witness in a copyright infringement matter, supporting the defendant and was also retained in a trade secrets and copyright infringement matter supporting the plaintiff. This expert has additional experience as an expert on a design and branded trademark infringement matter for the defense.

  
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• Expert Witness #248881

  This expert is a globally recognized authority on technology issues pertaining to intellectual property in the digital age. This expert has contributed to standards initiatives related to content identification, metadata, and rights. This expert has served as an expert witness in litigations related to copyright, digital content and security technologies, in federal court and before the Copyright Royalty Board and the PTO. This expert has testified before and advised public policy entities on digital copyright and technology issues on three continents. This expert is author of a book on DRM, and several whitepapers, book chapters and journal articles on technologies related to digital media and copyright.

  This expert has been an invited speaker at many conferences, including the World Economic Forum; National Association of Broadcasters annual conference; Congressional Internet Caucus State of the Net conference; the ACM Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference; International Copyright Technology Conference, Digital Book World, Progress and Freedom Foundation Summit; and Globes Business Conference. This expert has been quoted in publications worldwide and has appeared on news outlets.

  This expert was Chief Technology Officer of a knowledge destination web site for lifelong learners backed by scholarly institutions. This expert defined the content and e-commerce technology architecture and built its technology infrastructure. As Director of Publishing Systems at a publishing company, this expert implemented content management systems for many of the company's newspaper, book, and professional information publishing businesses, and performed technical due diligence on acquisition candidate companies. This expert's career in digital media began at a bond rating agency, where this expert developed a pre-web-era architecture for electronic publishing of credit reports. This expert holds a B.S.E. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and an M.S. in Computer Science.

  
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• Expert Witness #227330

  This expert is a musicologist and the president of a music consulting firm. This expert and her team of musicologists regularly advise clients on musical works for their commercials, films, and television series. This expert also frequently advises attorneys, advertising agencies, entertainment and recording companies, publishing firms, and musicians, addressing copyright issues, including those arising from digital sampling, electronic technology and Internet musical usage.

  In addition to successful consultancy, this expert teaches forensic musicology, and has testified quite often in copyright infringement matters, as well as in valuation disputes, including collaborative and derivative musical works. This expert has written numerous articles and a book in the area of contemporary music and copyright infringement.

  
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• Expert Witness #263043

  This expert helps clients assess and resolve patent and technology issues involving deep source code analysis. This expert has been through numerous ITC investigations and district court cases from complaint to hearing/trial. This expert has been engaged as a testifying expert in several cases including copyright. Multiple cases involved open source licensing including extensive analysis of GPLv2 license in a first matter and source code analysis of interrelated modules licensed under GPLv2 in second ITC matter.

  Recent projects include analyzing C++/C, NodeJS, Python, and Java code, projects involving communications between server and mobile devices and between servers, analyzing network communications, computer provisioning and sandboxing, document analysis including link extraction, network packet sniffing (Wireshark), and source code control systems (e.g., Git/GitHub). This expert went to trial as a testifying expert, was scheduled to testify as an expert at ITC before the case settled, and was a testifying expert in a copyright case. This expert also contributed considerable technical analysis of accused software, performing copyright analysis of computer networking code. This expert is very familiar with all forms of IP litigation including copyright, trade secret and patent litigation. As an attorney, this expert has focused on complex IP issues that require equal amounts of legal analysis and advanced technical analysis. This expert was a core member of the Complainant's counsel in an ITC case involving patents asserted against popular phones.

  
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• Expert Witness #249198

  This expert has spent a career dealing with art and art law. This expert has taught Art History at and Visual and Environmental Studies at prestigious universities. This expert is well published and has appeared on numerous panels on Art and Copyright law throughout the country. This expert is frequently a guest speaker on topics such as Contracts and Copyright, Aesthetics and the Law.

  
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• Expert Witness #123989

  This expert has many years in the jewelry industry concentrating on trade dress, copyright infringement, and component design, appraisals and valuation issues. This expert is an experienced expert witness and has provided invaluable consultation on the current marketplace for intellectual property matters. This expert utilizes painstaking research utilizing historical sources that transcend jewelry, evaluating design in architecture, artwork, and other media to determine originality in IP matters. This expert presents at industry conferences and has been published in industry journals. A respected instructor, this expert teaches courses in jewelry design, wholesale and retail buying, and market trends. Additionally, this expert is a noted appraiser (with current accreditation) and has served as a consultant in numerous jewelry and gem cases for private and government parties. This expert has written expert reports, and given depositions in copyright, trademark and appraisal-based matters, but has yet to testify at trial.

  
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• Expert Witness #217141

  This expert holds a PhD in Computer Science from an Ivy League School and is a nationally recognized computer scientist and attorney whose expert testimony was vital in two of the most important technology-based copyright/trademark infringement cases in U.S. history. This expert has served as an expert witness in multiple computer software and electronic voting cases. Total: 224 cases: 173 patent, 13 electronic voting, 11 trade secret, 10 copyright, 18 other. Affidavits, reports or declarations submitted in 151 cases. Deposed in 91 cases. Testified at trial or hearing in 42 cases. Participated in 3 reexams, 14 IPRs and 23 CBMs.

  This expert was lead witness in the first Court test of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which established the legal principle that distributing or linking to software that circumvents the copyright protection on digital videodiscs is illegal and a pivotal expert witness in recent precedent-setting technology cases. This expert, who holds seven degrees from major universities in different fields and is a registered patent attorney, has been affiliated with the School of Computer Science at a research university. This expert is now Principal Systems Scientist and Director of a company where this expert started a project developing a lexicon of all words in all known languages, specifically for use in machine translation. This expert’s research interests include digital libraries, language identification, electronic voting, automated negotiation, experimental mathematics, and Internet law and policy.

  
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• Expert Witness #123912

  This expert is a copyright infringement and trade dress consultant, forensic expert, jewelry appraiser and broker, and has served the jewelry industry for many years. This expert has been under contract with the Federal Trade Commission, Internal Revenue Service, U.S. Justice Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Customs Bureau, U.S. Secret Service, U.S. Trustee's Office, The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and The Ontario Attorney General as a forensic expert witness, consultant, mediator, and trustee. This expert's expertise is frequently sought by banks, museums, foundations, insurance companies, the jewelry trade (both wholesale and retail), law firms, accounting firms and individuals, and this expert has been called upon to testify as an expert witness in major court cases throughout the United States, Canada, Singapore and The Bahamas. This expert has been on staff as a research associate with a major Museum of Natural History, earth sciences division, and serves on its Board of Trustees. This expert also has experience teaching classes in gemology, gem sciences and jewelry.

  
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• Expert Witness #265412

  This expert is a founding principal of a consulting firm providing consulting, valuations and testimony regarding IP damages and licensing custom and practices. This expert focuses on copyright, trade dress, trade secrets and trademark infringement, publicity rights, social media and Internet infringement, defamation, marketing strategy analyses, royalty rate determinations and other intangible assets. This expert also provides valuation and monetization strategies for trademarks, trade secrets, publicity rights, domain names, Internet and social media assets, brands, copyrights and other intangible assets for financial reporting, bankruptcy and transactional due diligence. This expert is affiliated or associated with the major industry associations in licensing and in intellectual property and has been a frequent presenter at industry conferences. This expert has deep experience as an expert witness, having been the named testifying expert in over 75 cases, with over 20 depositions and five trials.

  
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• Expert Witness #266104

  This expert is a Member of a consulting firm offering financial and business expertise. The expert’s particular focus is in licensing and royalty rates, as well as damages calculations and related litigation support. This expert has served as an expert witness in three apparel matters (for three different clients) including copyright infringement (damages) of dress designs, value of dress designs and products in business interruption matter, and analysis of business and determination of reasonable royalty for dress designs and products involved in business acquisition. This expert was a patent examiner at the USPTO and served at the US Treasury and responsibilities including technology licensing, business valuation and transfer pricing, and corporate fraud. This expert’s testimony experience includes evaluating reasonable royalty rates including developing RAND royalty rates considering such issues as scope of the royalty base, lump sum and running royalties, royalty stacking, license comparability, university licensing agreements, exclusive licensing, and apportionment of profits to non-infringing components.

  
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• Expert Witness #266222

  This expert is a Senior Director at a large intellectual property equity firm. This expert’s specific advantage comes from having earned both an MBA in finance as well as a JD, cum laude. This expert has deep experience in valuing intellectual property, and in calculating damages from claims of infringement, breach of contract and is well versed in the proper methods of calculation, royalty rates, and in all aspects of damages assessment. This expert has particular experience in clothing and apparel industry matters and has been engaged for patent, trademark, copyright, trade secret and other intellectual property matters and has served as an expert witness.

  
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• Expert Witness #270671

  This expert is a literature, screenplay, and teleplay copyright infringement specialist. This expert holds a Ph.D. from an Ivy League school. Besides academic duties as a full professor, this expert served as the Chair of an English department and as an Associate Vice Chancellor of a university. This expert authors scholarly evaluations for distinguished academic institutions and is an evaluator for major publishers. This expert has served as a copyright evaluator and expert witness for both plaintiffs and defendants going back many years. This expert’s evaluations have been for screenplays, teleplays, books and other literary works. As a noted academic, this expert is a prolific author and frequent speaker.

  
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• Expert Witness #253706

  This music copyright damages expert has extensive experience as a financial damages expert witness in music copyright matters. This expert has worked in the music industry for over 35 years, including experience as a financial statement auditor for a large music label, later leading internal audit for a major music company, and serving as a royalty auditor for another major music company.

  This expert has been retained as a financial damages expert witness for musicians and music owners, and has also been retained as an expert witness in numerous copyright infringement litigation matters.

  
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• Expert Witness #255953

  This copyright damages expert is a Certified Licensing Professional and holds an MA in Economics, a BS in Computer Science, and a BA in Mathematics and Economics. This expert has focused a consulting career on intellectual property matters, with significant experience consulting on intellectual property issues, including copyright damages.

  This expert has been involved in over 220 litigation matters and over 150 intellectual property matters.

  
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• Expert Witness #258254

  This graphic arts copyright expert is a photographer, director, educator, publisher, and consultant with leading expertise in image licensing and copyright.

  This expert has been retained in hundreds of matters over 25 years, including matters involving competitive use of copyrighted works, such as photographs used in marketing materials.

  
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• Expert Witness #263364

  This software/source code expert holds a Bachelor's Degree in computer science from a university in the United Kingdom and has over 30 years of continuous experience in technology development. This expert's work covers many business areas, programming languages, and development environments, including over 20 years in financial services.

  This expert has provided technology and subject-matter expertise in litigation involving patents, copyright, and intellectual property since the early 2000s. This expert has deposition experience and extensive experience preparing declarations for the U.S. PTO, reports comparing source code, and prior-art reports for patent matters.

  This expert actively develops applications in C#, C++, and Java, including multi-service, cross-platform applications using reusable classes, queues, and IP technologies. This expert has over 30 years of experience in computer technology and actively codes in C++, C, C++ CLR, Java, JNI, and C#, with extensive experience in database technologies.

  This expert applies these skills to compare sets of source code and identify circumstances where code may have been copied or where an application may violate a copyright or patent. This expert uses a manual comparison process that reviews each line of code and the architecture rather than relying on software tools. The process produces detailed reports for use in later litigation stages.

  This expert has copyright experience in matters in the United States and Canada, including the use of abstraction, filtration, and comparison to evaluate applications and processes. This expert has applied standards such as Substantial Similarity, look-and-feel protection, and the virtually identical standard to compare applications and processes.

  This expert has created detailed process flows, used screen captures, and compared system outputs to identify areas of commonality or demonstrate a lack of overlap. This expert has examined project plans, user requirements, design documentation, system architecture documentation, user testing plans, and testing procedures, and has performed code comparisons and reported the results. This expert has also supported summary judgment work in software-related disputes.

  This expert has analyzed the use of open source code and its impact when used in developing an application. Open source code is often used to reduce development time or to include functionality outside a developer's existing skill set.

  This expert has considered legal implications associated with open source code, including the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and legal treatises addressing computer technology. This work has involved examining different license types, including GNU/GPL, Apache, and Android licenses.

  This expert has addressed the complexity of open source licensing, including how poor licensing choices or badly constructed licenses can create negative consequences for creators and users. Users of open source code need to examine the legal ramifications of such code to avoid negative impacts. This expert has opined that open source code can have both advantages and disadvantages and that users must understand the potential consequences of using it.

  This expert has evaluated alleged theft of intellectual property by examining systems for similarities in architecture, code, form flow, and function. This expert has considered opportunity, motive, deposition testimony, relevant skill sets, and whether a person accused of theft had the ability to take or copy code, documents, sales plans, or other material.

  This expert has examined security protocols of material owners to analyze whether alleged theft could have occurred and how it could have been done. This expert has collected this information and provided analysis in reports.

  This expert has supported software copyright matters involving web applications used for processing health insurance claims. The work included auditing applications, reviewing source code, interviewing technical personnel, studying allegedly infringing applications, and analyzing software copyright principles, including scenes a faire, abstraction, filtration, comparison, the virtually identical standard, and the substantially similar standard.

  This expert has analyzed business models, transaction flows, external data, data types, and process interactions to define the form, flow, and function of software applications and associated business processes. This expert has documented user interfaces, data fields, technology components, data items, data processing methods, and database structures, and has prepared detailed comparison reports addressing alleged copyright violations.

  This expert has also supported defense work in software copyright matters involving ATM, POS, check-image, and transaction-processing software. This work required knowledge of Java, Apache Camel, WebSphere, message queues, TCP/IP communications, remote-site connections, and Microsoft SQL Server.

  This expert has reviewed deposition testimony to validate or contradict technical claims, examined messaging formats used by financial transaction systems, analyzed data transfers using knowledge of TCP/IP, and evaluated interactions among card-processing entities to understand data-transmission protocols and message-format standards.

  This expert has provided knowledge of Check 21, the rule allowing images of checks to be treated as legally equivalent to paper checks, in connection with software capability analysis. This expert has performed line-by-line comparisons of software to source code alleged to have been copied and has analyzed copyright issues using public-domain and originality principles, U.S. Copyright Office materials, and form, flow, and function analysis.

  This expert has supported intellectual property theft matters involving software for large-scale prescription processing. This work included reviewing deposition testimony, evaluating skill sets, reviewing project plans, interviewing personnel, and applying experience in source-code security to assess whether theft allegations were technically supported.

  
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• Expert Witness #274655

  This copyright and trademark damages expert has over 25 years of experience across a broad range of litigation matters, with a special emphasis on calculating trademark and trade dress infringement damages, patent infringement damages, misappropriation of trade secrets damages, and copyright infringement damages.

  This expert is a prolific author and frequently invited presenter on topics related to trade dress, trade secrets, trademarks, and IP valuation.

  
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• Expert Witness #287184

  This trademark and copyright damages expert has been involved in numerous trademark and copyright matters for both plaintiffs and defendants across many industries, including entertainment.

  This expert has experience in matters involving trademark disputes tied to television programming, as well as copyright and breach-of-contract disputes involving television series.

  This expert has substantial experience in copyright infringement and teaches a class at a law school on damages in copyright infringement matters.

  This expert has testified in a variety of litigation matters involving patent, trademark, and copyright infringement.

  
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• Expert Witness #291102

  This music copyright damages expert has over 25 years of experience providing forensic accounting and financial and economic analysis to attorneys. This expert is an active member of a prominent copyright-focused professional society and has previously served on its executive board. Through that involvement, this expert has become well versed in the complex ecosystem of music royalties, including mechanical, performance, and sync royalties, as well as the various divisions among songwriters, performers, publishers, and distributors.

  This expert has served as an expert in copyright infringement disputes involving music and other creative works. The analysis has included calculating disgorgement of profits across multiple royalty streams in the music industry. This expert has also performed early case assessments involving alleged infringement of literary and musical works, including matters involving adaptation of written works into songs and disputes concerning sheet music and instrumental-only performers. This expert has also consulted with stakeholders concerning the setting of royalty-related rates by copyright tariff authorities for neighboring rights and private copying.

  
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• Expert Witness #295951

  This literary comparison and copyright expert is a leading authority on the business of publishing, testifying on legal aspects of the industry and providing expert witness services and publishing consulting across a wide range of areas. With over 30 years in the publishing industry, this expert has experience as a published author, bookstore owner, and developer of sales, marketing, and publicity strategies for numerous authors and publishers. This expert has also held roles in publishing and book distribution companies, gives public and private presentations, and chairs panels at industry conferences and meetings.

  This expert has read and evaluated numerous manuscripts, conducted comparisons with existing published works, written synopses and proposals, and critiqued and outlined further literary development as a literary copyright consultant, expert witness in copyright infringement cases, and literary agent.

  
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• Expert Witness #296818

  This trademark and copyright damages expert has over 30 years of experience in financial and litigation consulting, with expertise in intellectual property damages. This expert has provided financial analysis and valuation assessments involving patent, trademark, trade secret, and copyright issues, and has testified numerous times in patent infringement disputes, trademark disputes, copyright disputes, and false advertising disputes in both state and federal courts.

  
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