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Marty Mellican

Vice President and Associate General Counsel

Revenera

Marty Mellican is Vice President and Associate General Counsel at Revenera.

Recent Articles by Marty Mellican

How to Protect Your Company When Using Open Source Software

Today’s software is built like a Lego model. Instead of a singularly developed string of code, multiple building blocks of existing code are used to create a codebase. Some of those building blocks are developed in-house by the software vendor. Others are developed by third-party commercial software providers. And a lot of them come from open-source projects. When you’re a company that puts that codebase into your final product, you must take precautions to minimize the risks that each type of code presents to you and to your customers. This is what is meant by protecting your software supply chain. It’s also how you maximize the value of the code for you and your customers. Each type of code has its own set of benefits and risks that need to be understood and managed. This article addresses just one type of those building blocks: open source software (OSS).

Four Out of Eight Doesn’t Cut It: The IP Safeguards that Most Lawyers Miss When Protecting Software

Software is an extremely valuable good for those who produce it because it provides value to the software’s end users. That value, however, also makes it a target for those who would prefer to obtain the value without compensating the software producer. As a result, like with any valuable asset, software suppliers and Internet of Things (IoT) companies must implement safeguards to protect it. Since software is intellectual property, attorneys who work for or advise software producers (which, let’s be honest, is just about every technology company these days, given the addition of hardware manufacturers via the ubiquity of their “smart” devices to the existing desktop, mobile, and SaaS applications that we all use in both our personal and business lives), are frequently asked to advise on how to best protect this valuable asset. Unfortunately, as discussed below, most lawyers only deliver half of what they should.