One of OpenUK’s great strengths is its coalescing the breadth of knowledge within the UK legal community in open tech and the support this community gives to OpenUK. Many of these individuals give their time to OpenUK through its Legal Advisory Board Chaired by Chris Eastham provides insight and drafts OpenUK’s responses to proposed regulations and laws in the UK, the EU and beyond. It has also in the past submitted amicus briefs etc.
The recognised experts in this group include our CEO, former lawyer Amanda Brock, editor of the leading textbook, Open Source Law, Policy and Practice, published by Oxford University Press in 2022, Chris Eastham Chair of our Legal Advisory Board, Sonia Cooper, our data lead, world-leading open hardware expert, Andrew Katz, our Honorary Kings Council, Iain Mitchell KC, academic researcher Rowan Wilson, patent attorney Olivia Johansson and governance and compliance expert Sami Atabani.
Open source is about people, code and intellectual property.
OpenUK’s Legal Advisory Board and its Supporters and Special Advisors are the people who bring deep understanding to this legal work. Their understanding of software, hardware, data, standards and AI from the perspective of law and “curation” – good governance and technical hygiene – intellectual property, and commercialisation is based on their collective centuries of industry experience and professional works.
Legal Advisory Board Outputs
The group works in a proactive and reactive way, looking at necessary and forward-looking policies and areas of change as well as responding to proposed legislation in the UK and beyond.
2024
- Code of Practice for Software Vendors Call for Views Response, July 2024
- Cybersecurity of AI Call for Views Response, July 2024
- Competition and Markets Authority Market Investigation, July 2024 Cloud
- ICO Consultation on AI and Generative Models Response, May 2024
- Text and Data Mining Open Letter, March 2024
2023
- House of Lords LLM Report Response, November 2023 (OpenUK quoted)
- AI Institute Roundtable, July 2023
- Response to US IPO Proposed Rule, June 2023
- CyberSecurity Roundtable, May 2023
2022
- Plan for Digital Regulation Plan Response to DCMS, September 2022
- Future of Compute Review Call for Evidence Response, August 2022
- Standard Essential Patents and Innovation: IPO Call for views, March 2022
2021
- Cyber Security in Supply Chains and Managed Service Provider Response, November 2021
- Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property: copyright and patents, October 2021
- Data a New Direction Response, October 2021 (OpenUK quoted)
- Digital Identity and Attributes Consultation Response, September 2021
- Pro-competition Regime for Digital Markets Unit, DCMS July 2021
- US Executive Order 14028 on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity Call for Views Response, May 2021
- EU Shaping the future public sector interoperability policy, May 2021
- Consultation on VAT and the Sharing Economy, March 2021
- UK Government’s Green Paper: Transforming public procurement, March 2021
- Future Founders Report on Cabinet Office Procurement Contract, March 2021
2020
- UK Government’s Consultation on the National Data Strategy, December 2020
- EU Joint Report with OSOR on the state of Open Source in UK, July 2020
- US Amicus Brief Google v Oracle, March 2020
- FOSS4SME and letter to MPs, January 2020
Legal Advisory Board
Consultant, Bristows LLP and CEO, Orcro Limited
Legal consultant and PhD Candidate (International Law x Computer Science), University of Cambridge
Head of Research Computing and Support Services, University of Oxford
Technology & IP Licensing Consultant, Atabani Consulting Ltd, Open Chain contributor, OpenUK Legal & Policy member
Inaugural Jeff Price Chair in Digital Law, King's College London
