Pierce Law's Student Intellectual Property Law Association is presenting a day-long symposium on Open Source and the Free Software Movement, designed for lawyers and non-lawyers alike.
The speakers include senior attorneys from Hewlett Packard, Black Duck Software, the Free Software Foundation, and prestigious Boston firms. In addition, Richard Stallman, one of the original creators of the open source effort, is a speaker.
I encourage you to visit www.students.piercelaw.edu/sipla/siplasymp.htm for more information. The Symposium will be on Saturday, March 26, 2005, from 8:30 a.m. (registration at 8:30 a.m., speakers at 9 a.m.) to 5:00 p.m. at Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, New Hampshire. If the attendee is seeking continuing legal education credit (5.0 hours), the cost is $50; to all others the symposium is FREE.
The presentations will address a myriad of open source business issues, including the economic reality of the attractiveness of open source software, the changing copyleft/GNU/freeware licenses, the impact of the SCO case against IBM (alleging copyright infringement by IBM in use of Linux) and the impact on due diligence in the purchase of assets from businesses using Linux operating systems, the patent and open source relationship, and software compliance. Richard Stallman's compelling topic is "Free Software and Beyond."
The symposium will be an excellent source of information for any business tapping the vast open source software well or considering that resource, as well as attorneys representing those businesses. The issues that will be addressed impact business acquisition, product/software development, patent and copyright licensing, and architecting a business' technological future.
Click here to review the symposium flyer in PDF.
