DisputeSoft was engaged as a testifying expert in February 2018 by Tritium, Inc. to assist in a breach of contract lawsuit before the Circuit Court for Fairfax County, Virginia, involving TritiumSoft’s acquisition of Tritium’s software assets.

    On August 7, 2015, TritiumSoft and Tritium entered into an asset purchase agreement under which TritiumSoft agreed to purchase Tritium along with Tritium’s proprietary network security software. The contract provided, inter alia that Tritium’s software would be free of defects that would materially affect its performance. Tritium further warranted that its software would be free of source code that might impede its marketability such as third-party proprietary source code and source code protected under an open source license.

    TritiumSoft filed a breach of contract suit against Tritium in January 2018, alleging that Tritium’s software contained open source content and excessive functional and performance defects. Prior to filing suit, TritiumSoft had hired a third-party to conduct a software composition analysis on Tritium’s source code. The software composition analysis found that Tritium’s source code contained open source content licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) Version 2. The analysis also revealed that Tritium’s software contained proprietary source code that could not be distributed without purchasing a commercial license. Tritium subsequently engaged DisputeSoft to evaluate TritiumSoft’s technical claims.

    Our Services

    As software experts, DisputeSoft performed the following services:

    1
    Researched e-mail correspondence and marketing materials to determine whether TritiumSoft knew that Tritium’s software was incomplete at the time of the acquisition.
    2
    Conducted data analytics of defect records in TritiumSoft’s Jira database to determine whether Tritium’s software contained an unreasonable number of material defects as of the acquisition date.
    3
    Conducted automated and manual examinations of Tritium’s source code to quantify its use of open source and proprietary material, and researched software industry metrics to estimate the length of time needed to remove and replace the open source content with equivalent functionality.

    DisputeSoft drafted an expert report opining that Tritium’s solution contained a trivial amount of open source and proprietary third-party content, and that TritiumSoft knew or should have known that Tritium’s software was incomplete at the time of acquisition. TritiumSoft and Tritium entered into a settlement agreement for an unspecified amount in July 2018.

    Learn more about our Source Code Audit Services

    DisputeSoft provides source code audit services to law firms engaged in complex software disputes.