Legal

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

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

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.