Year-in-Review: Law hot topics on Opensource.com

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The most-read posts this year on the Opensource.com Law channel showed a strong interest in diverse legal issues in the open source world. Many readers were reaching out for a better understanding open source licensing and related questions, such as:

Why should I use an open source license?

How do I choose an license?

What are the courts doing in license disputes?

We also covered interesting discussions relating to open source and trademarks, which sometimes seem at odds but ultimately must live together. And, the topic of software patents continues to be the subject of passionate dialogue. Just last week, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case of Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International, which involves the question of whether computer-implemented inventions are eligible for patenting under U.S. law.

Looking ahead to 2014, I’ll boldly predict that software patents will be a highly discussed topic in our open source community.

Top 10 open law articles in 2013

  1. Which open source software license should I use?
  2. Post open source software, licensing and GitHub
  3. The Fantec decision: German court holds distributor responsible for FOSS compliance
  4. Abolishing patents: Too soon or too late?
  5. The Python trademark dispute
  6. Congress looking to act on patent assertion entities
  7. Everything you need to know about licensing in 2 minutes
  8. FSFE opposes claim that free software harms consumers
  9. Judges split on software patents and computer transubstantiation
  10. Open source under the lens of an intellectual property lawyer

 

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Rob Tiller is vice president and assistant general counsel for Red Hat, where he manages patent, trademark, and copyright matters. He is a frequent speaker and writer on open source legal issues. Before coming to Red Hat, he was a partner with the law firm of Helms, Mulliss & Wicker, PLLC, where he specialized in commercial and IP litigation.

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