Red Hat Hires IP Lawyers

Red Hat is shoring up its IP expertise. Why we can only speculate about.

It’s hired two IP experts. Robert Tiller is now assistant general counsel. Richard Fontana, last with the Software Freedom Law Center and involved with Eben Moglen in drafting and getting the GPLv3 accepted, is now Red Hat’s open source licensing and patent counsel.

Tiller, who will be responsible for the team covering open source licensing, copyright, patent and trademark, is out of Helms, Mulliss & Wicker and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

He is supposed to develop new policies and strategies related to legal issues in open source.

Fontana is supposed to serve as Red Hat’s liaison with the open source community on licensing issues.