Tool suite targets IP theft

SAN FRANCISCO — Zeidman Consulting Monday (Aug. 7) introduced a suite of tools for comparing computer source code to detect such things as plagiarism, copyright infringement, intellectual property theft and patent infringement.

According to Zeidman (Cupertino, Calif.), the product, CodeSuite, can also generate detailed HTML reports and statistics spreadsheets.

One component of the suite, CodeMatch, uses algorithms to compare source code files and rank them according to correlation scores, Zeidman said. These algorithms have been shown to produce more exact results than any other source code comparison tool available, according to the company.

Another component, CodeDiff, performs a line by line comparison of source code files, running much faster than CodeMatch to give preliminary results and to pare down the number of files for CodeMatch to examine, according to the company.

"CodeMatch has been a fantastically successful tool for copyright infringement litigation," said Bob Zeidman, president of Zeidman Consulting. "It's become a de facto standard at several premiere intellectual property law firms."A fully functional copy of CodeSuite is available from the Zeidman Consulting Web site. It can be used to compare sets of source code files of 1 megabyte or less at no charge. For jobs over 1 megabyte, licenses must be purchased from Zeidman Consulting for $10 per license.

CodeSuite runs on a personal computer using the Windows operating system.