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.
