Greater Credibility to Forensic Procedures with Further Research on Software Elements
As discussed in the previous chapters, forensically important elements play a vital role in every process and procedure of software copyright infringement litigation. These elements play a vital role in the calculation of the degrees of similarity and commonality (between the complainant’s as well as the defendant’s software) and in the assessment of the duplication of the protectable expressions in the defendant’s software. Induction of additional software elements in the forensic processes and procedures that can make the forensic efforts more reliable (in software copyright infringement cases) will add much more credibility to the results of the forensic process.
Any such novel additions can be in the form of either an existing software element taking on some additional forensically important role or additional judicial interpretations on ideas and expressions in software. Existing software elements can have unexplored forensic use and so they need to be further put through extensive research to enhance their role and credibility.
Any such novel additions can be in the form of a new software element also. Several new elements enter into the making and functioning of software as a result of the rapid growth of software technology in particular and the computer and communication technology in general. These newer software elements include both literal and non-literal elements (see chapter 3) and can be in the form of new verbs, nouns, grammar rules, expressions, database elements, data structures, menu structures, programming logic etc. They can be inducted either in software or in the related files (such as data bases, watermarks, included objects etc.). Any such induction of elements in software technology requires an initiation to institute corresponding changes in software forensic technology too (because software forensic technology has software technology as one of its bases). Some or all of these elements may have forensic implications in the context of software copyright. Various forensic roles of these new elements need to be assessed (just as the forensic roles of programming blunders were assessed in chapter 8) and properly integrated into the copyright infringement forensic context (Bhattathiripad, 2012).