Shane Coughlan is an expert in communication, security and business development. His professional accomplishments include spearheading the licensing team that elevated Open Invention Network into the largest patent non-aggression community in history, establishing the leading professional network of Open Source legal experts and aligning stakeholders to launch both the first law journal and the first law book dedicated to Open Source.
Shane has extensive knowledge of Open Source governance, internal process development, supply chain management and community building. His experience includes engagement with the enterprise, embedded, mobile and automotive industries.
The OpenChain Newsletter provides a monthly summary of our work. It contains an overview of what we are doing to build trust around license compliance and security in the open source supply chain. We accept suggestions and ideas. Feel free to mail us at any time.
Shane Coughlan, OpenChain General Manager, closed the Bitkom Forum Open Source on the 28th of September 2023 with a talk discussing 12,000 years of collaboration (and OpenChain).
Maximizing the Opportunity While Managing the Risks
Generative AI (GAI) provides powerful opportunities for innovation and productivity across all organizational functions – from composing emails and crafting press releases to retouching and refining images and video, all this in seconds. GAI tools can even be used to write, test and improve computer code! This comes with risks that need to be managed within your organization, in order to realize the competitive advantage these GAI tools can provide.
In this webinar, Anthony Decicco and Wael Nackasha, attorneys at GTC Law Group:
Provide an introduction to GAI and its use to generate software code, text, and images
Explain how machines learn, including training data and the resulting models
Cover how developers are using GAI tools (such as GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT) to write and augment source code, with a focus on:
Tony is a member in GTC’s IP Strategy, Mergers & Acquisitions, and Business & Technology Transactions groups. He focuses on mergers and acquisitions, strategic development of patent portfolios, valuing and commercializing intellectual property assets, and licensing and other technology-related transactions. In addition, Tony founded and oversees the firm’s Open Source Compliance and Due Diligence practice and has extensive experience advising clients regarding the use of open source software. He has reviewed the results of literally thousands of code scans.
Tony is also the Co-Lead of GTC’s Artificial Intelligence practice and has counseled clients regarding traditional AI/ML (i.e. algorithmic/rules-based) for many years and has more recently focused on generative AI. He specializes in data set licensing and strategies for acquiring and collecting data, developing patent portfolios focused on AI inventions and applications of AI technologies, developing AI-related contract terms, risk assessment and mitigation, and related policies and guidelines, in respect of using AI to generate and test software code and the intersections between open source software and AI. Tony is the co-chair of the AI & Cloud Computing sector of the Licensing Executives Society.
Tony’s clients range from individual inventors to Fortune 100 companies. Given his extensive experience on both the buy and sell sides of mergers and acquisitions, patent purchases/sales and IP/technology licensing transactions, he is a trusted advisor to clients on all sides of the table. For acquirers, a key strength is his ability to leverage this experience to quickly identify and assess IP-related risks. On the sell side, this experience translates to grooming clients and positioning IP assets to maximize value and minimize issues during rigorous due diligence.
Prior to joining GTC, Tony was a member of the IP & Technology, Internet & E-Commerce and M&A practice groups at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. He has research and professional experience in a diverse range of fields, including patent valuation, law and economics, molecular evolution, apoptosis, and lipid biochemistry. Tony holds an Honors B.Sc. in Biochemistry from McMaster University, an M.A. in Economics and a J.D., both from the University of Toronto, where he was a law review editor. He is admitted to practice in Massachusetts, New York, Ontario, and before the United States Patent and Trademark Office (with Limited Recognition).
Wael Louis Nackasha
Wael focuses on M&A due diligence and technology-related transactional matters. Wael specializes in open source software licenses, commercial licenses, strategic and commercially-sensitive NDAs, and IP strategy advice. Wael also has deep technical knowledge in machine learning. Before joining GTC, Wael was an Associate at Ridout and Maybee LLP where he drafted and prosecuted patents for various technologies, including electrical, machine learning, blockchain, telecommunication, and computer-related technology, before both the USPTO and CIPO.
Before becoming a technology attorney, Wael was a research scientist and software programmer for several years. He published scientific papers in conferences and journals in machine learning, biometrics, computer vision, signal and image processing, and statistical signal processing. Wael holds a J.D. from Osgoode Hall Law School, and a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Toronto with a dissertation focused on artificial intelligence.
LR29, a cutting-edge IT-focused law boutique based in Hamburg, Germany, has proudly joined the esteemed OpenChain Partner network. Founded by experienced former in-house counsels Maxim Letski and Dr. Eduard Hofert, LR29 is dedicated to guiding businesses through technology-related legal challenges, optimizing legal processes, and the efficiency of legal departments.
‘Given our past with open-source-based business models and our passion for great technology, we are very happy to become a partner of OpenChain. This partnership emphasizes LR29’s unique approach to support our clients’ navigating the complexities of legal requirements in supply chains and other legal challenges of the industry. We can help our clients to set a high level of open-source compliance improving their market position reducing risks and repetitive tasks.’
‘It is great to welcome the LR29 team to our official partner program,” says Shane Coughlan, OpenChain General Manager. “LR29 adds a strong focus on pragmatic legal advice for software vendors facing market challenges when approaching large corporations in their got-to-market processes to the German network a further milestone in the maturity of the OpenChain ecosystem.’
More About LR29
With substantial expertise gained from their previous roles at reputable tech companies and open-source brands such as Google, N26, Open-Xchange, and HiveMQ, the founders have played pivotal roles in establishing legal departments from the ground up and in negotiating large-scale software license and SaaS agreements with enterprise customers on behalf of software vendors. This extensive in-house experience sets LR29 apart from traditional law firms.
Check out an excellent case study by Charlotte Gayton, Engineering Intern at endjin.
“As my industrial placement year comes to an end, so does my time with the OpenChain project. Over the past year I have worked through the full lifecycle of a project, from ideation & envisioning, to planning, implementation, testing, deployment, roll-out and maintenance to ensure that we are open-source license compliant, and therefore meet the specifications of the OpenChain project. Starting with discovering what open-source licenses are, to collecting and processing data, and finally to displaying it in a way that is useful to the company. In this blog I am going to take you through the processes and explain how we adapted and created our processes in checking our whole codebases components.”
Maximizing the Opportunity While Managing the Risks
September 11th @ 17:00 PST / September 12th @ 08:00 CST / 09:00 KST + JST
Generative AI (GAI) provides powerful opportunities for innovation and productivity across all organizational functions – from composing emails and crafting press releases to retouching and refining images and video, all this in seconds. GAI tools can even be used to write, test and improve computer code! This comes with risks that need to be managed within your organization, in order to realize the competitive advantage these GAI tools can provide.
In this webinar, Anthony Decicco and Wael Nackasha, attorneys at GTC Law Group, will:
Provide an introduction to GAI and its use to generate software code, text, and images
Explain how machines learn, including training data and the resulting models
Cover how developers are using GAI tools (such as GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT) to write and augment source code, with a focus on:
Tony is a member in GTC’s IP Strategy, Mergers & Acquisitions, and Business & Technology Transactions groups. He focuses on mergers and acquisitions, strategic development of patent portfolios, valuing and commercializing intellectual property assets, and licensing and other technology-related transactions. In addition, Tony founded and oversees the firm’s Open Source Compliance and Due Diligence practice and has extensive experience advising clients regarding the use of open source software. He has reviewed the results of literally thousands of code scans.
Tony is also the Co-Lead of GTC’s Artificial Intelligence practice and has counseled clients regarding traditional AI/ML (i.e. algorithmic/rules-based) for many years and has more recently focused on generative AI. He specializes in data set licensing and strategies for acquiring and collecting data, developing patent portfolios focused on AI inventions and applications of AI technologies, developing AI-related contract terms, risk assessment and mitigation, and related policies and guidelines, in respect of using AI to generate and test software code and the intersections between open source software and AI. Tony is the co-chair of the AI & Cloud Computing sector of the Licensing Executives Society.
Tony’s clients range from individual inventors to Fortune 100 companies. Given his extensive experience on both the buy and sell sides of mergers and acquisitions, patent purchases/sales and IP/technology licensing transactions, he is a trusted advisor to clients on all sides of the table. For acquirers, a key strength is his ability to leverage this experience to quickly identify and assess IP-related risks. On the sell side, this experience translates to grooming clients and positioning IP assets to maximize value and minimize issues during rigorous due diligence.
Prior to joining GTC, Tony was a member of the IP & Technology, Internet & E-Commerce and M&A practice groups at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. He has research and professional experience in a diverse range of fields, including patent valuation, law and economics, molecular evolution, apoptosis, and lipid biochemistry. Tony holds an Honors B.Sc. in Biochemistry from McMaster University, an M.A. in Economics and a J.D., both from the University of Toronto, where he was a law review editor. He is admitted to practice in Massachusetts, New York, Ontario, and before the United States Patent and Trademark Office (with Limited Recognition).
Wael Louis Nackasha
Wael focuses on M&A due diligence and technology-related transactional matters. Wael specializes in open source software licenses, commercial licenses, strategic and commercially-sensitive NDAs, and IP strategy advice. Wael also has deep technical knowledge in machine learning. Before joining GTC, Wael was an Associate at Ridout and Maybee LLP where he drafted and prosecuted patents for various technologies, including electrical, machine learning, blockchain, telecommunication, and computer-related technology, before both the USPTO and CIPO.
Before becoming a technology attorney, Wael was a research scientist and software programmer for several years. He published scientific papers in conferences and journals in machine learning, biometrics, computer vision, signal and image processing, and statistical signal processing. Wael holds a J.D. from Osgoode Hall Law School, and a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Toronto with a dissertation focused on artificial intelligence.
Suzhou PrismAurora Information Technology, a company specializing in open source and software supply chain security services, is the latest official tool partner of the OpenChain Project. They provide customers with source code component homologue (clone) analysis, compliance analysis, security analysis and management solutions.
“We are delighted to foster more choice in the automation market related to supply chain compliance and security,” says Shane Coughlan, OpenChain General Manager. “With this announcement, we further our mission to support the Chinese supply chain, and by extension improve a critical pipeline for global technology products.”
Learn More About The Company
Suzhou PrismAurora Information Technology Co., Ltd. is an innovative company focusing on open source software management and software supply chain security services. It provides customers with comprehensive solutions for source code component homology (cloning) analysis, compliance analysis, security analysis, and management, comprehensively ensuring the security and compliance of enterprise open-source assets. The company’s products and services have been widely used in many fields and have been widely praised by users.
The OpenChain Newsletter provides a monthly summary of our work. It contains an overview of what we are doing to build trust around license compliance and security in the open source supply chain. We accept suggestions and ideas. Feel free to mail us at any time.
