"Clear, correct, and deep, this is a welcome addition to discussions of law and computing for anyone -- even lawyers!" -- Lawrence Lessig, Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and founder of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society

If you work in information technology, intellectual property is central to your job -- but dealing with the complexities of the legal system can be mind-boggling. This book is for anyone who wants to understand how the legal system deals with intellectual property rights for code and other content. You'll get a clear look at intellectual property issues from a developer's point of view, including practical advice about situations you're likely to encounter.

Written by an intellectual property attorney who is also a programmer, Intellectual Property and Open Source helps you understand patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, and licenses, with special focus on the issues surrounding open source development and the GPL. This book answers questions such as:

• How do open source and intellectual property work together?

• What are the most important intellectual property-related issues when starting a business or open source project?

• How should you handle copyright, licensing and other issues when accepting a patch from another developer?

• How can you pursue your own ideas while working for someone else?

• What parts of a patent should be reviewed to see if it applies to your work?

• When is your idea a trade secret?

• How can you reverse engineer a product without getting into trouble?

• What should you think about when choosing an open source license for your project?

Most legal sources are too scattered, too arcane, and too hard to read. Intellectual Property and Open Source is a friendly, easy-to-follow overview of the law that programmers, system administrators, graphic designers, and many others will find essential.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 14 Ratings

I'm so glad I read this book - 2009-02-18
Reviewer Rating:
I took a trip this last week, one that involved several hours of airplane travel each way. I took this book along and couldn't put it down. If you are like me, you have heard about and read through some of the philosophical foundations of software licensing, copyright law, and intellectual property, but sometimes it all seems so complicated that you aren't really sure how it all fits together. Patents, copyright, trademarks and trade secrets, licenses and contracts all seem to overlap at times making a sort of intellectual property law soup that can be hard to digest. That is precisely why I picked up this book.

Now, I have read books by Lawrence Lessig and the writings of people like Richard Stallman and Eric Raymond. I am on board with the idea of making information, including program code, as free and accessible as possible. What has not been clear to me is the legal aspects. When is it possible to use GPL licensed code in a project? Which licenses have the greatest affect on the freedom of the code and in which ways? How is this different from software patents and why do these patents even exist? This is the tip of the IP iceberg.

This book was written by someone who works as a liaison between engineers and lawyers, translating for each side to the other. If this book is any indication, I bet he is quite good at his job. The information he presents is incredibly clear. While it is not intended as a substitute for legal advice from a lawyer who understands the specifics of the law in your locale, it is intended to give you an understanding of what the issues are, the definitions of and affects of patents, copyright, trademarks and trade secrets, and more, and I walked away after reading it feeling like I have a base understanding of the issues that is a lot deeper and clearer than I had before.

The book begins by giving a bit of history regarding the economic and legal foundations of intellectual property law. It continues from here into very specific discussions of each part, including the history and arguments leading up to why we have the laws we have today. Once the foundation is understood, it becomes more obvious how we arrived at our current (and rather messy) state of affairs.

The last third to half of the book focuses directly on open source software licensing. The book includes a discussion of the similarities and differences in perspective between the Open Source and the Free Software movements, the specifics of each of the main software licenses in use today and how they have and have not been tested in the legal system, gives advice for programmers and intellectual property creators who are also employees of a company to help them interact in good faith with their employers in the hope of preventing problems, and even such interesting legal areas as reverse engineering.

The book does not focus on the philosophy behind why someone would want to us a free or open license for their work. If that is what you are looking for, look elsewhere. However, if the specific legal issues interest you, but you don't understand legalese, I don't think I have seen a better text. I think it would be appreciated by a lawyer, a programmer, a project supervisor, or anyone who just wants to try to make sense of the topic.

Intellectual Property and Open Source - 2008-12-08
Reviewer Rating:
This is the most insightful explanation of patents, copyright, trade secrets, contracts and licenses I have come across so far. This book appears to be targeted to software developers (there are frequent programming analogies throughout the book). Don't expect that reading this book alone will make you into an expert on the subject -- but there are plenty of pointers to more detailed sources for those who care. Perhaps the most practical part of this book (for most people) is the explanation of the differences between popular (and less popular) open source licenses. Somehow the author manages to do so without getting tedious. Especially valuable here is that the author is clear about where there are different interpretations, and what has (or more often, has not) been upheld in court. The subject is still evolving (several ongoing court cases are referenced), so the book will probably need a second edition soon.

How current IP's laws affect the whole software business - 2009-02-28
Reviewer Rating:
I've read quite a few books on this topic; so far this has been the best. First of all, the author doesn't only cover open source license (like previous books from O'Reilly did), he goes deeper, explaining how current IP's laws affect the whole software business. The chapters on patents, copyright, trade secrets and contracts bring more depth and make this a valuable book for anybody working in the IT industry, even for people not involved in developing or using open source projects

So-so - 2009-01-18
Reviewer Rating:
While informative, this book was not the interesting read I was hoping to find. It was dry and boring. If all you need is information, it will work, but don't expect entertainment.

5 Cheers for Intellectual Property ad Open Source - 2008-12-27
Reviewer Rating:
This is a fantastic book! If you are an open source developer/contributor, this is a must-read. I've just written a full review here:

[...]

Here's an excerpt:

"Intellectual Property and Open Source accomplishes a difficult goal of sharing dense information while making the subject matter engaging. This is done through examples, thought experiments, and well developed analogies. Van does an excellent job of igniting a powerful curiosity on the part of the reader while providing rewards for this in the lucid explanations of related laws and perspectives."

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