AttorneysEd Center

The past year has been one of the most active yet for legal issues relating to open source software. With corporations continuing to use open source software in an ever-widening variety of situations, most can now ill-afford to ignore the impact of these issues on their businesses. In this installment of the Celesq®-West IP Master Series, Jason Haislmaier, a partner with the law firm of Holme Roberts & Owen LLP and the author of the ThinkingOpen blog (www.thinkingopen.wordpress.com), and Stormy Peters, Director of Community and Partner Programs at OpenLogic and co-founder of the GNOME open source foundation, provide a look at these issues and a discussion of what changes they bring for corporate counsel charged with the task of open source compliance. Topics include:


- The \"BusyBox\" Lawsuits-the first lawsuits filed in the U.S. seeking to enforce the GNU General Public License (GPL), brought by the developers of the popular open source software application BusyBox;

- Open Source Software Patent Infringement-Software patents asserted by and against users and developers of Linux and other open source software such as Red Hat, Novell, Sun Microsystems and Net App;

- The Impact of GPLv3-the ongoing use and adoption of version 3 of the most popular open source license in the world; and

- Changes in Open Source Compliance-how to evolve your open source compliance efforts beyond merely risk mitigation to help add value to your business.