Glossary

A plain-language reference of terms that come up in our expert witness and consulting work — software licensing and SaaS, reasonable measures to protect trade secrets, software patents, and software industry customs, standards, and practices. Use the A–Z index to jump to a letter.

A

Application Programming Interface (API): A defined set of rules and interfaces that lets one software program interact with another. APIs are frequently at issue in software disputes over interoperability, licensing, and copyright.

D

Daubert Standard: The legal standard, derived from Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, that federal courts use to decide whether expert testimony is reliable and relevant enough to be admitted. Many state courts apply a similar test.
Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA): A 2016 federal law that creates a private civil cause of action for trade-secret misappropriation, allowing owners to sue in federal court. It requires that the owner have taken reasonable measures to keep the information secret.
Deposition: Sworn, out-of-court testimony given by a witness in response to attorneys' questions and recorded for later use in litigation. Expert witnesses are routinely deposed before trial.

E

End of Availability (EOA): A vendor policy date after which a particular software version is no longer offered for sale or new licensing, even though existing customers may keep using it. EOA, together with end of life and the shift to subscriptions, is reshaping enterprise licensing.
End of Life (EOL): The point at which a vendor stops supporting, maintaining, or issuing updates for a software product or version, after which customers run it at their own risk.
End User License Agreement (EULA): The contract between a software vendor and an end user that sets the terms on which the software may be used, including restrictions on copying, modification, and transfer.
Expert Witness: A person with specialized knowledge, skill, training, or experience who is permitted to offer opinion testimony to help a court or arbitrator understand technical issues. In software matters, an expert may address how software was developed, licensed, or implemented, as well as the industry's customs and practices.

I

Industry Customs and Practices: The established, common ways companies in an industry develop, license, sell, and support their products. They often set the baseline against which a party's conduct is assessed in a dispute.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): A cloud computing model in which a provider delivers fundamental computing resources — servers, storage, and networking — over the internet, which customers use to run their own software.

M

Maintenance and Support: The recurring services a vendor provides for licensed software — bug fixes, updates, new versions, and technical assistance — usually sold as an annual percentage of the license fee.

N

Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA): A contract in which one or more parties agree to keep specified information confidential. NDAs are a common component of the reasonable measures used to protect trade secrets.

O

Object Code: The machine-readable form of a program produced by compiling source code; it is what a computer actually executes and is typically what vendors distribute to customers.
On-Premises Software: Software installed and run on a customer's own hardware and managed by the customer, in contrast to vendor-hosted SaaS.
Open Source Software: Software distributed under a license that grants users the right to view, modify, and redistribute its source code, subject to license conditions. Obligations vary widely by license and can affect proprietary software that incorporates open-source components.

P

Patent: A government-granted right that lets an inventor exclude others from making, using, or selling a claimed invention for a limited period in exchange for public disclosure. Software-related inventions may be patentable, subject to legal limits.
Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB): An administrative tribunal within the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that hears challenges to patent validity, including inter partes review, and appeals of examiner decisions.
Perpetual License: A software license that grants the right to use a specific version of a program indefinitely for a one-time fee, often with separate, recurring charges for maintenance and support.
Platform as a Service (PaaS): A cloud computing model in which a provider supplies a platform — operating system, runtime, and development tools — on which customers build, deploy, and run their own applications without managing the underlying infrastructure.
Prior Art: Evidence that an invention was already known or available before a patent's effective filing date. Prior art can be used to challenge a patent's novelty or non-obviousness.
Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK): A Project Management Institute publication that documents generally accepted project-management knowledge and practices. Like SWEBOK, it provides an independent, replicable reference for industry norms in litigation.

R

Reasonable Measures: The steps a company takes to keep information secret so that it qualifies for trade-secret protection — for example, access controls, confidentiality agreements, and security practices. What counts as reasonable depends on the facts and is frequently the central question in trade-secret litigation.

S

Service Level Agreement (SLA): A contractual commitment defining the level of service a customer can expect — such as uptime, performance, and response times — often with credits or remedies if the provider falls short. SLAs are central to SaaS agreements.
Software as a Service (SaaS): A software delivery model in which an application is hosted by a vendor and accessed by customers over the internet, typically under a subscription rather than a one-time purchase. The vendor manages the infrastructure, updates, and availability.
Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK): An IEEE Computer Society publication that documents generally accepted knowledge in software engineering. It is an independent, replicable source for establishing industry customs and practices in litigation.
Software Escrow: An arrangement in which a neutral third party holds a copy of software source code and releases it to the licensee under defined conditions, such as the vendor's bankruptcy or failure to support the product.
Source Code: Human-readable program instructions written in a programming language, before they are compiled or interpreted into a form a computer executes. Source code is often a company's most sensitive software asset and a frequent subject of trade-secret and licensing disputes.
Subscription License: A software license that grants the right to use a program for a defined, recurring term — monthly or annually — with access ending when the subscription lapses. It is the dominant model for SaaS.

T

Trade Secret: Information that derives independent economic value from not being generally known and that is the subject of reasonable measures to keep it secret — for example, source code, algorithms, or customer data.