[UPDATED: Please be sure to see the update,
containing exclusive, previously unreported news, added at the bottom of this
article.]
The BRAD BLOG learned this morning that
a New Jersey judge has today given plaintiffs and Princeton University computer
scientists the right to examine the state's Sequoia AVC Advantage touch-screen
voting machines which failed to record voter totals accurately, in at least six
different counties, during the Garden State's recent Super Tuesday primary.
Sequoia had previously both threatened legal action against the
professors, despite a unanimous request from a state association of county
election clerks, and attempted to
quash the court-ordered
subpoenas to have the machines impounded and examined independently.
The Courier-Post confirms this afternoon, and publishes the following
account of the Judge's decision today...

The BRAD BLOG has covered this (sometimes very amusing) saga in great
detail, since it first came to light following the election (and even on
Election Day, when machine failure kept the NJ Governor from being able
to cast his own vote for 45 minutes).
For those who haven't been able to keep up with it all, a post which quickly
recaps the bulk of Sequoia's disgraceful NJ behavior can be read here.
We've also continued to cover (with complete exclusivity, unless someone else
in the media cares to join us! Hello?) the saga of beleaguered Sequoia's fight
for their very life, as they attempt to fend off a hostile take-over by competitor Hart
InterCivic.
IMPORTANT/EXCLUSIVE UPDATE!: AP
jumps in with a few more details raising a point which The BRAD BLOG can reveal here for the first
time, concerning Sequoia's "intellectual property" rights. Namely, they neither
own, nor control them, as admitted recently by the company's own CEO...
From the AP story:

For all of Sequoia's alleged concerns about "intellectual property," we
suspect the judge and the plaintiff's attorneys in NJ might be interested to
know that Sequoia President and CEO Jack Blaine recently confirmed that they
don't control the IP of Sequoia voting machines!
We can confirm that Blaine recently told employees, in a confidential,
company-wide phone conference --- convened to inform them of the attempted
takeover by Hart InterCivic, as they were forced to, after The BRAD BLOG broke the story ---
that "it doesn't really matter" whether Sequoia has control of the intellectual
property rights for its voting systems, since Sequoia has no claim to them.
As he admitted during the phone call, the IP rights for their voting systems
are controlled not by Sequoia, nor by its alleged current owner, SVS Holdings,
Inc. --- of which Blaine is also CEO/President, and VP/Spokesperson Shafer is a
shareholding partner --- but by its supposedly former parent company,
Smartmatic.
When he was asked by an employee, during the recent conference call, about
the fact that the proposed deal would give Sequoia's intellectual property to
its competitor, Hart, as confirmed by the 4/4/08
court documents we published [PDF], Blaine responded cavalierly: "It doesn't
matter whether you have the IP rights, or you don't have the IP rights."
"We have the source code, and we have the right to modify it any way we want
to modify it," he explained, concerning the company's agreement with Smartmatic.
"So it doesn't matter really whether we have the IP or not."
"I didn't particularly want the IP [presumably when he negotiated Sequoia/SVS
deal with Smartmatic]...as we've discussed in the past, I believe we've really
come across the perfect time to change our portfolio going forward. And it's not
gonna be dependent on the Smartmatic technology, or the IP or anything else.
It's gonna be dependent on what we collectively believe the market, and what the
future standards, will require."
In other words, again, from the admissions of Sequoia's own CEO and
President, the company has no apparent claim over the IP rights for Sequoia's
voting machines, including the rights for the machines whose independent
examination is currently being negotiated with the judge in NJ.
We'd be happy to offer more details to either the judge or the plaintiff's
attorneys working on the case, of course.