Keystone Helps Quinn Emanuel & IBM Secure Victory in IBM’s Landmark Software Reverse Engineering Case

We are proud to have supported IBM in securing a decisive victory against LzLabs—one of The Lawyer’s Top 20 Cases of 2024.  The UK High Court has ruled in favor of IBM UK, finding that LzLabs and its affiliates engaged in deliberate and systematic reverse engineering of IBM’s proprietary mainframe technology to develop its competing product, the Software Defined Mainframe.  This landmark ruling sets a critical precedent in software licensing and intellectual property protection.

Led by @Rohit Chatterjee and @Max Whitmore, the @Keystone Advanced Technology Services (K.ATS) team played a pivotal role in supporting the case’s technical analyses—conducting code review and system testing to demonstrate the reverse engineering.

K.ATS-supported experts, @Jon Weissman and @Michael Swanson, delivered technical analyses and reports detailing the reverse engineering conducts, providing the Court with the clarity needed to assess IBM’s claims.  

The judge recognized the experts’ contributions as instructive to the decision, stating: “It is clear that each of the above individuals acquired a deep understanding of the technical issues in dispute and used his considerable intellectual understanding and expertise to assist the court.”

This success was made possible by the legal team, led by:

• @Quinn Emanuel
• @4 Pump Court
• @Brick Court Chambers
• @Serle Court
• @8 New Square  

Congratulations to all involved in securing this landmark decision.  For more details, feel free to contact us here.

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