Ed Yourdon is a computer software consultant who provides litigation-support services and expert-witness testimony in two broad areas of the computer industry: Information Technology (IT) project failures, and intellectual property (IP) disputes associated with software products and systems. Yourdon was inducted into the Computer Hall of Fame in 1997, along with such notable computer experts as Charles Babbage, Bill Gates, Grace Hopper, and Seymour Cray; more recent inductees have included Steve Jobs, Alan Turing, Tim Berners-Lee, Marc Andreesen, and Linus Torvalds. In December 1999, he was identified by CrossTalk, the computer IT journal of the U.S. Department of Defense, as one of the ten most influential people in the computer software field, together with computer software experts such as Charles Babbage, Alan Kay, Alan Turing, Watts Humphrey, Barry Boehm, Tim Berners-Lee, and Grace Hopper.

Yourdon has worked with several dozen regional and national law firms during the past 15 years, has represented both vendors and customers of computer software development products and systems, and has provided expert-witness testimony approximately a dozen times in both arbitrations and jury trials at the state and Federal level.

Having written over 500 technical computer articles (including “Keep Lawyers in the Loop” and a Slideshare presentation titled “IT Litigator’s Library“) and two dozen computer books – several of which are used as standard textbooks in university courses around the world — Yourdon has a unique ability to communicate complex, computer-related concepts clearly — particularly in litigation situations where technical expert witnesses are needed for an objective perspective on what should have been expected of, and by, the various parties, and where attorneys need to provide a plain-English synthesis of what often seems an overwhelming amount of arcane, detailed, computer software mumbo-jumbo. This is particularly important in today’s computer projects, which are often outsourced to IT vendors and IT systems integrators, which can lead to disappointing project outcomes — e.g., project cancellations, substantial schedule delays (projects delivered long after the agreed-upon deadline), expensive budget overruns, buggy computer software, or inadequate software performance/capacity. This sometimes leads to litigation between two or more parties — with customers, hardware/software vendors, sub-contractors, and IT systems integrators blaming each other for misrepresentations, breach of contract, failure to adhere to IT industry “best practices,” incompetent IT project management, and a variety of technical errors.

As a testifying expert witness, Yourdon knows how to interview fact witnesses to glean the background and conduct of a IT development project; and he is experienced with the onerous task of poring through thousands of pages of technical documents and e-mail archives to find out what really happened in a complex IT development project. He documents his opinions and analyses in cogent, well-organized, grammatically perfect (well, almost perfect) reports that (unlike software projects) are always delivered on time. His testimony before juries and arbitrators is equally clear, cogent, and credible.

Yourdon also provides expert witness services and testimony in IP disputes involving computer software, e.g., claims of patent infringement, copyright infringement, and/or misappropriation of IT trade secrets. This sometimes requires a forensic analysis of the software source code; it may also involve a comparison of the computer architecture, design, and specifications of the computer programs that are alleged to be derivatives, or copies, of one another. In some cases, it also leads to a “productivity analysis” to determine whether the accused software could realistically have been developed within the timeframe and person-hours of effort that have been claimed by the accused software developers. In his expert witness reports and trial testimony, Yourdon demonstrates that an extraordinarily high productivity level (e.g., measured in lines of code per person-month of effort) is often persuasive evidence that the accused software could only have been developed so quickly by using the source-code, design, and/or other trade secrets associated with the original software.

Ed Yourdon can be contacted via email at ed@yourdon.com or by phone at +1-212-214-0775 for more information about his litigation-support and expert-witness services.