Intellectual Property and Open Source: A Practical Guide to Protecting Code

by Van Lindberg

"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 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.

Genres: Nonfiction, Law, Programming, Business

371 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2008

Reviews

[TruongSinh Tran-Nguyen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The content is superb and useful, while the narrative is satisfying. The book has abundant analogies taken from normal life (such as commercial bank vs credit union, but this is familiar to US), fiction (such as Medieval fortress defense), technology world (such as firewall, deny by default), or even the programming language (such as reserved keywords and idioms) to explain the legal concepts of IP and IP laws, making it really comfortable for the targeted audience (IT professionals with little to no legal background or interest) to follow and understand. Besides, plenty of real and fictional example cases are used to further explain and distinguish the concepts, make it even easier to grasp the ideas.

[Csabi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not your everyday book to dive in but definitely worth it. The author explains the proper way to cover everything right from the beginning, making it less intimidating.
Don't get me wrong it's packed with legal terms, but the author managed to present everything from a coder's perspective as well.
I highly recommend it for anyone wondering about Open Source as much as general hiring and everyday job-related legal insights.

Found this valuable:
“Speaking generally, if you don’t license your code, it can’t be used (legally) by other people.”

[Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you want to know more about the fundamentals of intellectual property, this is a great book. It's easy to read and comprehend.

[Hans]

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