From 2002 to 2017 I worked with Fred Pytlak and his pediatrician wife, Dr. Edna Pytlak, creating and expanding the immunization component, VacLogic™, of their Office Practicum pediatric practice software. Each year since 2010 they paid an annual license fee to my one person company, AmziLogic LLC, for its software tool, ARulesXL, that made the current version of VacLogic™ possible.
Nearing retirement, Fred had this to say in an email:
In 2017 or 2018 Fred and Edna sold their interest in the company and Connexin Software Inc. is now one of many companies owned, in part or in whole, by the $3+ billion investment company, Pamlico Capital.
On July 1, 2021 the management of Connexin decided to stop paying the annual license fee for ARulesXL. This, despite the fact, and knowing full well, that ARulesXL is what enables Connexin to make easy updates to VacLogic™ for constantly changing vaccine knowledge, and what enables them to distribute that knowledge to their pediatric practice customers.
As they no longer had a license to use ARulesXL, I informed them they had to remove all copies of ARulesXL from their machines and from the distribution files they send to their customers.
They refused, and said they intend to continue to use the software, citing a 2003 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that I wrote to Fred Pytlak when we began work together. When I explained that that MoU never mentions ARulesXL, was written two years before ARulesXL even existed, and refers to an earlier and completely different version of VacLogic™, they still insisted that it was a software license that gave them the right to use ARulesXL in perpetuity without paying license fees.
Thus the lawsuit.
I am asking for compensation for the months they have distributed, for profit, the software without a license and for an injunction to prevent further use. They counter that the MoU is a license and an injunction would be unfair since VacLogic™, which requires ARulesXL to run, is essential to their business. Anyone with a Pacer account can view the various declarations associated with the lawsuit.
The case has been tied up in the courts for close to a year now with no settlement in sight. The current battle is over venue.
Despite the lawsuit, which drags on as the lawyers spar, Connexin continues to update and distribute VacLogic™ as evidenced by OP release notes in January, 2022 describing Covid-19 updates to VacLogic™.
This is the first time in my 45 years in the commercial software business that I’ve felt it necessary to hire a lawyer to resolve a software dispute. Here is the background that led to the lawsuit.
Overview
ARulesXL is critical for Connexin because it is the technology that makes the current version of VacLogic™ possible. VacLogic™ is the software module that gives Office Practicum (OP) an advantage in its ability to handle vaccines better than its competition. This is a key factor in the pediatric practice Electronic Health Record (EHR) market.
While the case is simple, it is made confusing by the argument Connexin uses to justify continued use of ARulesXL to update and distribute VacLogic™ with OP. That argument relies on a 2003 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between myself and Fred Pytlak.
Despite the fact that that 2003 MoU makes no mention of ARulesXL, that it was written two years before ARulesXL even existed, that it describes text-based files encoding vaccine knowledge, rather than the ARulesXL spread sheet interface, and that it specifically mentions a different product as the software needed for updating and distributing VacLogic™, Connexin uses it as the basis for their claim.
The MoU refers to an earlier version of VacLogic™ developed with a different software technology. Here is the full MoU with links to detailed descriptions of the two versions of VacLogic™. VacLogic Memorandum of Understanding
They claim that document proves that Connexin does not have any need to pay for a license for ARulesXL. They dismiss, as irrelevant, the yearly invoices, from 2010 on, which clearly state they are for an ARulesXL annual license fee. Those invoices were paid and approved by Fred Pytlak up until his retirement, and were continued to be paid by Connexin after that up until July 1, 2021.
Whatever Connexin’s justification for not paying, however they interpret the history of my past relationship with Connexin, it is a simple fact that they are using and distributing ARulesXL today and that they do not have a valid license for that use.
Here is the background of my relationship with Connexin and the development of VacLogic™.
The Software, Companies, and People
Office Practicum (OP) is an Electronic Health Record (EHR) system designed specifically for managing pediatric practices.
VacLogic™ is the module within OP that allows pediatricians to manage all the complexities of immunizations and was a key component in giving OP a competitive edge in the pediatric software market.
Fred and Dr. Edna Pytlak are the creators of Office Practicum (OP), software designed specifically for running pediatric practices, starting with Edna’s Brooklyn pediatric practice.
Connexin Software Inc. is the company formed by a merger between Fred and Edna Pytlak with others and is the current owner and distributor of OP with over 4,000 customers. Up until retirement in 2017 Fred Pytlak was actively involved in running the company.
AmziLogic LLC is a one person company, owned by me, Dennis Merritt. It specializes in software products and services for rule-based application development.
Dennis Merritt is the individual who designed and created VacLogic™ for Fred and Edna Pytlak. (See related projects.) There were two production versions of VacLogic™. Externally they provided the same interface to OP customers. Internally they were completely different. The first was built in 2003 using the logic programming language Prolog. The second was a complete rewrite built using the business rule language of ARulesXL. That version evolved between 2005 and 2010 as more and more features were added.
ARulesXL is a software product, owned by AmziLogic, that was designed and created by Dennis Merritt. It allows the integration of business rules with Excel spread sheets. It is the tool that was used to implement the current version of VacLogic™, and that underlies the ongoing updating and distribution of VacLogic™ to Connexin’s OP customers.
Pamlico is the firm that made a major investment in Connexin in 2018 and lists it as one of its many profitable companies.
VacLogic™ History
The history of Office Practicum (OP) and VacLogic™ can best be understood looking at the presentation on OP’s Web site. https://www.officepracticum.com/company
They have a time line of the significant events. Here’s the first three important entries.
Note the importance of VacLogic™ in that history. Here’s what it said about it:
That was where I had first entered the picture, designing, building and integrating that first version of VacLogic™ software into Office Practicum. The work began around Fred and Edna Pytlak’s kitchen table in their Brooklyn home, with Fred working on how OP would use the data, Edna supplying the expertise and critical review of the vaccine knowledge, and me creating the software to deliver Edna’s and the DHS’s knowledge in a timely and complete fashion to OP customers.
No other Electronic Health Record (EHR) supplier of the day was able to handle vaccines as well. VacLogic™ correctly caught missed and late doses, dealt with combination vaccines as well as their individual components, and handled all the exception rules for use, such as required spacing between different live virus vaccines.
That version worked well, but the vaccine knowledge was coded in Prolog text files, requiring me to maintain them. This made Fred worry about what would happen if I “were to be hit by a bus.”
In 2005 I had developed for other customers, ARulesXL, a rule-based language embedded in Excel. I told Fred I could use that tool to rewrite VacLogic™ so that the knowledge was encoded on Excel work sheets and could be maintained by a non-programmer. Fred liked the idea and that new version grew with expanded capabilities up until 2010.
(Note that it took me only a month to write the first version of VacLogic™ using Prolog, and it only took me a month to write the second version us ARulesXL. Which partly this is due to my experience with this type of application, it is also a testament to the value of the productivity gains these tools provide for this sort of knowledge-based application.)
After mentioning VacLogic™, the Connexin history focuses on the investors and growth, reaching 4000 pediatric providers in 2016. It was Fred’s goal, when we created VacLogic™, that it would drive the company to reach 2000 providers. He exceeded that by quite a bit.
Connexin continues to advertise and promote VacLogic™ on their Web site.
It was around 2017 that Fred and Edna Pytlak retired and Pamlico became, I believe, the controlling interest in the company. Slightly before retiring Fred sent me this email:
The time line continues to the present.
Since 2010, Fred had been authorizing and paying an annual software license fee for my software product, ARulesXL, which underlies the current version of VacLogic™. In 2017, around when Fred retired, I had asked for the invoice to be paid a little early because of a vacation. This was his response.
For the next three years Connexin continued to pay the yearly invoice for the annual ARulesXL license. This invoice, identical to previous ones except for the date, was sent in June of 2021 and was the first one that they questioned.
After an online meeting in August, 2021 with Marc Abercrombie, Bethany Williams and others from Connection, Marc Abercrombie sent me this email, regarding that invoice.
It echoes the arguments made by Bethany Williams, who I believe is Marc Abercrombie’s boss, during that online meeting we had discussing the invoice. The arguments were further echoed in a subsequent meeting with the new CFO, Stacy Kilgore, during a meeting where they said we could work things out, but that they still would not pay for an ARulesXL license and would continue to use ARulesXL to update and distribute VacLogic™.
The declarations associated with the actual lawsuit further echo these claims.
I then asked Marc Abercrombie to show me the actual license agreement that they have governing the use ARulesXL. He sent me a copy of the 2003 Memorandum of Understanding. (Note that an MoU is not a software license.)
Status
[June 2022 update] It took until May for the judge to consider the case, and he is first looking into Connexin’s claim that it can’t be filed in Massachusetts. To that end the judge has given us two months to depose witnesses to gather information to support the case that they do business in Massachusetts. (They have already admitted to having customers in Massachusetts, AmziLogic LLC is in Massachusetts, Connexin has a registered agent in Massachusetts, but still…)
The lawyers are arguing about what sort of questions can be asked and how many, questions just to decide the issue of whether or not the Massachusetts judge will consider our complaint. Our main complaint asks for an injunction to stop Connexin from using and distributing ARulesXL as we wait for this to work it’s way to trial.
Meanwhile, Connexin continues to update and distribute ARulesXL with no concern for the copyright infringement claim, as evidenced by these release notes.
