Venue: University of Skövde, room G110
Date & time: 27 February 2015, 10:15-12:00
Registration: The number of seats is limited. Registration in advance is required. Please register for this event by sending an email with subject "Open Seminar" containing your name and affiliation to this email address by latest 24 February.
Agenda:
10:15 – 10:20 Welcome and introduction
10:20 – 10:40 Highlights from the ORIOS project
10:40 – 11:40 Invited presentation by Andrew Katz
11:40 – 12:00 Q&A related to presentation by Andrew Katz
Presentation by Andrew Katz:
Copyright, software patents, and licensing of open standards and open source: challenges and opportunities
Abstract:
Understanding legal and licensing challenges related to specifications of IT-standards and software systems is of critical importance for any organisation involved in development of software systems. For example, it is widely acknowledged that certain IT-standards are provided under conditions which are incompatible with open source licenses, and there are a number of legal issues impacting on use of such standards. Legal and licensing challenges are of particular importance for small companies wishing to utilise open standards and their implementations in software systems.
Licensing of both technical specifications of standards and source code for software is based on fundamental principles for copyright. Further, there are complex relationships between patents which may impact on both technical specifications of standards and specifications of software. In addition, there are also complex relationships and influences between IT-standards and their implementations in open source software, at both strategic and technical levels. Such relationships need to be thoroughly understood by individuals and organisations wishing to be successful in the broader open standards ecosystem. For example, distribution of software in which specific file format standards are implemented may impose significant legal challenges.
This presentation provides an overview on contemporary legal and licensing issues impacting on the broader open standards ecosystem. Specifically, copyright and its relation to licensing of open standards and open source software will be addressed and illustrated with examples.
Brief biography for Andrew Katz:
Andrew holds a law degree from Cambridge University, and qualified as a barrister. He subsequently requalified, and now practises, as a solicitor. Andrew has practised technology law for 20 years, and has been at Moorcrofts for 14 of those, joining Adrian in March 2000, just after the firm was founded. In that time, he has become one of the UK's leading free and open source software lawyers, is a Fellow of the Free Software Foundation Europe and the Open Forum Academy, and visiting lecturer on Free and Open Source Software at Queen Mary, University of London.
He has lectured on open issues in London, Paris, New York, Boston, Seoul, Helsinki, Stockholm, Mangalia (Romania), Brussels, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Edinburgh, Oxford and Cambridge. He is on the core drafting team of the CERN Open Hardware licence and sits of the board of the MariaDB foundation, where is legal counsel. He acts for some of the world's leading free and open source software companies and projects, including Canonical (Ubuntu) and CentOS (where he negotiated the business transfer to Red Hat). He also handles complex cloud computing and project agreements, including cross-border data protection issues. He has, more recently, become involved in the rapidly expanding fields of open data and open hardware, and, as well as speaking on legal issues at the Open Hardware Summit in New York in 2012, he co-opened the 2014 Open Hardware and Data Conference in Barcelona (the world's first legal conference specialising in open hardware and data).
Andrew Katz