In early 2008, New Jersey election officials announced that they planned to send one or more Sequoia Advantage voting machines to Professors Edward Felten and Andrew Appel of Princeton University for analysis. Felten and Appel are computer scientists interested in security issues, especially in regard to electronic voting systems. In March 2008, Sequoia sent an e-mail to Professor Felten asserting that allowing him to examine Sequoia voting machines would violate the license agreement between Sequoia and the county which bought them, and also that Sequoia would take legal action "to stop... non-compliant analysis... publication of Sequoia software... or any other infringement of our intellectual property." This action sparked outrage among computer technology activists. Author and digital rights activist Cory Doctorow commented "It's hard to imagine a stupider legal threat." Shortly after this, Sequoia's corporate Web site was hacked. Ironically, the hack was first discovered by Ed Felten. Sequoia took its Web site down on 20 March and removed the "intrusive content". The Avante Lawsuit In June 2006, Sequoia Voting Systems, along with Diebold and ES&S:, were sued: by a small, virtually unknown New Jersey technology company called 'Avante', alleging infringement of two of its patents covering DREs (Direct Recording Electronic voting machines) and Optical Scanners. The lawsuit demands that the three companies a) are prohibited permanently to sell all their “infringing” equipment; b) recall all “infringing” equipment; c) destroy or deliver to Avante the “infringing” equipment; d) award “infringement” damages to Avante including treble damages for "willful infringement". Sequoia Voting Systems, in particular, was sued for its Edge, Advantage, 400C, VeriVote Printer (VVPAT) and Insight machines (that is, for all of its products except one). The other two companies were sued for almost all of their products. Smartmatic's continuing interests in Sequoia On August 26, 2005, Sequoia Voting Systems announced that Mr. Jack Blaine would serve in the dual role as President of Sequoia Voting Systems and President of Sequoia's parent company, Smartmatic. In April 2008, competitor Hart InterCivic attempted a hostile takeover of Sequoia. Court documents unearthed at this time revealed that Smartmatic still retained some financial control over several aspects of Sequoia. At the time, Smartmatic held a $2 million note from SVS Holdings, Inc., the management team which purchased the company from Smartmatic. In accordance to the acquisition contract, Smartmatic also retains ownership of intellectual property rights for some of Sequoia's currently deployed election products in the