Open Source Software Might Be Great for Engineers, But It's Tougher for In-House Attorneys

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(Photo: Shutterstock.com)[/caption] For a software engineer, open source software can be a fast and reliable way to fill in gaps in the coded part of a product when there's no time to create new code. But for in-house counsel, it can be a headache dealing with the different licensing agreements that go along with open source. “Engineers love it,” Sarah Beisheim of Xerox Corp. explained on Thursday during a panel discussion on IP at the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Corporate Counsel University in Philadelphia. She explained that engineers are turning to open source software as a way to find solutions to issues they face in their work at times when their funding decreases. But Beisheim, senior intellectual property counsel at Xerox, explained that finding open source code isn't necessarily the easy solution it appears to be. She said that the engineers go to the internet to find what they believe to be free code, but it generally is not actually free. “It is always subject to a license of some sort,” Beisheim said. Marc Lorelli, co-chair of Brooks Kushman’s IP litigation practice, gave the example of someone tasked with writing the code for a ride sharing app who wanted to use an open source code for the GPS component. "I don’t have to deal with figuring out how to develop GPS," Lorelli said. "Somebody has already done it. It’s very effective. But if I put it in my code, I could end up owing the app to somebody else or having to disclose it publicly. I basically just lost the company’s crown jewels if I use open source in an improper way or a way that isn’t consistent with the license that I signed up for by pulling it off of the internet.” Beisheim said it is very important for development communities to track and log and preserve and document what open source code is used, what version it is and what licensing terms apply. “Keep a record of that, so that you can demonstrate that your distributions for your internal use were proper,” Beisheim said. The need to be careful with open source also applies to companies' third-party partners. Beisheim said that, in contracts with vendors, she would ensure that the vendors represent to the company that there is no open source software used in their products.