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Red Hat adds top intellectual property lawyers
Mar. 06, 2008

It's a sign of the times when a major open-source company makes a big deal of hiring not top developers, but top lawyers. On March 5, Red Hat announced that it is hiring top intellectual property attorneys Robert Tiller, as vice president and assistant general counsel, and Richard Fontana, as open-source licensing and patent counsel.

Tiller comes to Red Hat from the North Carolina law firm Helms, Mulliss & Wicker, where he worked in IP and technology litigation, commercial litigation, and antitrust. At Red Hat, Tiller's job will be to oversee Red Hat's internal IP team. In addition, Tiller will work on new legal open-source policies and strategies.

Fontana, although not a vice president, is better known to the open-source community. He served with the Software Freedom Law Center as a counsel. There, he worked with Eben Moglen on advising the Free Software Foundation and Richard M. Stallman on drafting GPLv3. At Red Hat, Fontana will continue to work directly with the legal side of the open-source community. He'll also manage patents and open-source licensing.

Both of Red Hat's new lawyers will report to Executive Vice President and General Counsel Michael Cunningham. "It is an honor to call these experienced intellectual property litigators Red Hat's own," said Cunningham in a statement.

"With the combination of Richard and Robert's backgrounds, our team has gained important ground in regard to intellectual property, open-source licensing and patents--areas that have increasingly gained importance in the success of Red Hat and the open-source community."

—Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols


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