# Deepak Massand

> Deepak Massand (1951-2015) founded Litera Corp. in 2001 after a career that included running a tea plantation in Assam and executive roles at Johnson & Johnson, Merz Pharmaceuticals and Skila. Based in McLeansville, North Carolina, he developed document collaboration, comparison and metadata-management technology and received ILTA’s 2014 Vendor Thought Leader Award. Colleagues remembered his humor, personal relationships and attention to customers.

- **Role:** Entrepreneur, inventor and business executive
- **Organizations:** Litera Corp., Johnson & Johnson, Merz Pharmaceuticals, Skila
- **From:** Indore, India
- **Known for:** Founded Litera Corp. in 2001., Received the 2014 ILTA Vendor Thought Leader Award; the announcement credited him with more than 14 patents at the time., By August 2014, Litera reported more than a dozen products used by more than half of the Global 200 law firms.

## Career timeline

- **1951** — Born on October 11; Litera’s retrospective identifies his birthplace as Indore, India.
- **Age 25** — Ran a tea plantation in Assam after studying agriculture.
- **Before 2001** — Held roles including Executive Director at Johnson & Johnson, President and CEO of Merz Pharmaceuticals, and Director at Skila.
- **2001** — Founded Litera Corp. in McLeansville, North Carolina.
- **2007** — Explained the Litera IDS document collaboration system in a Q&A with Ken Adams.
- **2010** — Litera introduced Launchpad, a desktop toolbar designed to avoid third-party add-in integration complexity.
- **2011** — Litera licensed its patented server-based metadata-removal technology to Microsystems.
- **2014** — Received ILTA’s Vendor Thought Leader Award.
- **2015** — Died on December 28 in McLeansville, North Carolina.

## Achievements

- Founded Litera Corp. in 2001.
- Received the 2014 ILTA Vendor Thought Leader Award; the announcement credited him with more than 14 patents at the time.
- By August 2014, Litera reported more than a dozen products used by more than half of the Global 200 law firms.
- Named inventor on patents covering compound-document comparison, table comparison, collaboration and metadata management.

## Latest updates

- **2023-07** — U.S. patent 11,699,018, for comparing selected text, was granted to Litera Corporation with Deepak Massand named as inventor; this was a posthumous grant.
- **2020-06** — U.S. patent 10,685,177, for comparing digital data in spreadsheets or database tables, was granted with Massand named as inventor.
- **2017-01** — Litera’s newsletter remembered its founder and described the company’s first full year after his death.

## Links

- Twitter/X: https://x.com/deepakmassand

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/deepak-massand
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-15