Consulting and Contract Development

John Levine consults and performs prototype development for e-mail and other Internet systems through his company Standcore LLC.

Through his leadership of the Domain Assurance Council, the IRTF Anti-Spam Research Group, the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail, the Network Abuse Clearinghouse, and extensive informal contacts in the ISP and e-mail software community, he offers insight and advice on the design and implementation of e-mail systems.

He offers a series of white papers on electronic mail, along with shorter mini-papers and a weblog on e-mail technology.

He also offers e-mail system development, particularly on systems built around the popular qmail mail system.

Dr. Levine has served in an expert witness on a variety of computer related topics. These are some of the cases in which his participation is in the public record.

Internet E-mail and Spam

In U.S. vs. Robert Soloway, after Soloway pled guilty, he testifed as an expert on behalf of the US Department of Justice at the sentencing hearing, describing the technical aspects of spamming, and explaining why Soloway's disk full of e-mail addresses could not be a legitimate advertising product.

In Blue Mountain Arts vs. Microsoft he was Blue Mountain's expert. He analyzed and reported on Microsoft's software and systems, and was deposed by Microsoft's counsel. The case was settled.

In Virginia vs. Jaynes et al. he was the Commonwealth of Virginia's expert, testifying about his analysis of the e-mail that Jaynes sent, and why it was not plausible that the mail had been solicited by the recipients. The jury found Jaynes guilty and sentenced him to nine years in prison.

Copyright and Intellectual Property

In Perfect 10 v. Giganews, he served as Giganews' technical expert, submitted an expert report, and was deposed. This case, which was decided in Giganews' favor on summary judgement, concerned Giganews' responsibility for allegedly infringing images in the Usenet distributed bulletin board system.

In Oracle v. Google he was one of Google's technical experts, submitted an expert report, and was deposed. This phase of the case concerned the validity of several patents related to the Java programming language. Oracle dropped the patents from the case before trial.

In Perfect 10 vs. Google, he has served as Google's technical expert, submitted an exert report, and was deposed. This complex case concerns the copyright status of Google's indexing of third-party images that allegedly infringe the plaintiff's copyright.

In Agence France Presse vs. Google, he submitted an expert report as Google's expert. The case, which was settled, concerned the copyright status of the Google News index of online news sites.

In Field vs. Google he was Google's technical expert. The case, which was decided in Google's favor, concerned the copyright status of Google's web page cache.

He also serves or has served in several cases related to patents on web and e-mail technology.

Graphics file formats

Dr. Levine has been retained as an expert witness for possible litigation related to patents on computer image file formats. His book Graphics File Formats, 2nd ed is one of only two ever written on the topic.

Compilers

Dr. Levine has served as an expert witness in cases related to compilers, computer software that translates one computer language into another.

In VLIW Technology L.L.C vs. Hewlett Packard et al. he submitted an expert report on behalf of Hewlett Packard and was deposed. This case, which HP won on summary judgement, concerned compiler technology licensed to H-P, and the nature and commercial value of that technology.

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