Data shows that most companies are greatly undercounting their use of open source software (OSS), leading to potential legal and security concerns that need to be respected and tracked. Additionally, customers are expecting higher levels of compliance. This begs the question, what is your legal team's role in managing compliance and security vulnerabilities associated with OSS?
There's a real and immediate need for your legal counsel to understand open source software and the accompanying legal obligations and potential business impact to your company. This is true for large enterprises as well as small-to-medium sized businesses. Open source licenses are just like other licenses, meaning there is tremendous value in keeping an accurate inventory—aka "bill of materials" (BOM)—of open source software and licenses, both from a security and compliance perspective. Open source management is also an important part of day-to-day operations for Merger & Acquisition (M&A) and security response.
Join Marty Mellican, Associate General Counsel at Revenera, as he discusses the need for process and lawful management of OSS.
Marty Mellican is Vice President and Associate General Counsel at Revenera in Itasca, Illinois. In that role, Mr. Mellican manages many aspects of Revenera's legal needs, including all agreements related to licensing both on premise and cloud software as well as providing related consulting services related to the installation, configuration and deployment of Revenera's many products. Other responsibilities include overseeing mergers and acquisitions, corporate entity management, third party intellectual property licensing, employment matters and export compliance. Prior to Revenera, Mr. Mellican was an associate in Mayer Brown LLP's corporate group, where he focused on representing private equity and venture capital investors with respect to their investments in, divestitures of and management of portfolio companies. Mr. Mellican received his JD from the Illinois Institute of Technology's Chicago-Kent College of Law where he was elected to the Order of the Coif. Mr. Mellican also holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.