This book is generally about software intellectual property and specifically
about the field of software forensics. While you may never testify in a courtroom,
attempt to deduce the true owner of a valuable program, or measure the
intellectual property (IP) value of software source code, if you are at all involved
with software you need to know how to protect your rights to that software.
This book will give you an understanding of those rights, their limitations,
how to protect those rights, and how to take action against someone or some
organization that you believe has infringed on those rights.
Unlike digital forensics, which studies the bits and bytes on a digital storage
medium, such as a hard disk or DVD-ROM, without a deep understanding of
what those ones and zeros represent, software forensics studies the software code
that instructs a computer to perform operations. Software forensics discovers
information about the history and usage of that software for presentation in a
court of law. It combines information and techniques from computer science,
mathematics, and law in a way that is unique and, I believe, particularly interesting.