It’s a good question, one we hope to make more sense of on April 15th at our Legal Hackathon.  

Back in February, Veronica from Docracy and I started discussing what coders should sign at a hackathon to avoid some of the pesky problems of authorship.  That is, how can a company conceived at a hackathon ensure that it doesn’t cut out a fellow collaborator (or worse, get overly generous in handing out its IP), in turn jeopardizing the propriety of that valuable startup source code?

I’m not sure I had a good answer, but I took a stab at it, all the while thinking, “I wish I had a few more perspectives on this.”

But this wasn’t the first time I wished I had a room (virtual or real) of legal minds and coder-thinkers to toy with an idea that makes the world better.  In fact, I’m definitely not the first person to think so.  Around the time SOPA and PIPA were sparking civic protest, we found an “open source” version of legislation introduced by Rep. Darrell Issa that would ensure an open web.  Then we found out that Ari Hershowitz organized a legal hackathon last September to open up California legislation.

BLIP thinks it’s about time to bring the legal tech talk to the Alley.  The question is, are you ready?

~Phil~

http://legalhackathon.blipclinic.org