Lawyering Up

Red Hat Puts More Muscle On Its Legal Staff — Linux — InformationWeek

Red Hat is beefing up its legal staff with two appointments to strengthen its hand in patent disputes and open source licensing issues.

Company spokesman on Wednesday declined to comment on whether Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)’s claims in early and mid-2007 that its patents cover parts of Linux had anything to do with the expansion.

“We are helping pave the way for open standards and changes in the IP regime needed for the future,” responded Robert Tiller, VP and assistant general counsel for IP, one of the new hires at Red Hat’s legal department. “We feel a responsibility to lead these efforts and to encourage projects that support open, multi-vendor standards,” he wrote in an email response.

Red Hat announced Wednesday that it was adding Tiller and Richard Fontana, a former associate of Eben Moglen at the Software Freedom Law Center, to its legal staff. Fontana will be Red Hat’s open source licensing and patent counsel.

This entry was posted by T. Colin Dodd on Thursday, March 6th, 2008 at 8:10 am and is filed under Truth, Democratizing Content, Copyright as a weapon, Patent do's and don'ts, Copyright, Open Standards, IP Law, Software Patents. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.