Dr. Miriam Ballhausen

Dr. Miriam Ballhausen is an attorney-at-law and currently serves as Senior Associate at Bird & Bird LLP. Prior to joining Bird & Bird, Miriam worked at Lumesse GmbH, where she was responsible for software compliance and data protection law. Prior to joining Lumesse GmbH, Miriam worked at the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection in Germany and at JBB Rechtsanwälte, a Berlin based law firm with its main focus on IT/IP law, where she advised clients on legal matters relating to Free and Open Source Software, software licensing and software contracts. Miriam also leads the Certification Working Group of the OpenChain project hosted by the Linux Foundation.

Albert Hayr

Albert is a senior software and system architect, who designs comprehensive solutions for different domains and does architectural guidance and governance on corporate level for an international group. His great passion to technology and open source showed him very early the future importance and success of open source in the global industry. Therefore, he started already in the 2000s years to address professionally license compliance and quality assurance for open source in business. Albert always tries to establish the best solution on a holistic business level with the capabilities to deep dive in various topics.

Armin Hemel

Armijn Hemel, MSc, is one of the world’s leading compliance engineers. He studied computer science at Utrecht University. From 2005 – 2012 Armijn served on the coreteam of gpl-violations.org and developed a thorough understanding of license compliance issues in global electronics supply chains. As the owner of Tjaldur Software Governance Solutions he has helped many companies with compliance issues. True to his academic roots he keeps exploring and has published about compliance and provenance at the MSR, WCRE and ASE conferences.

Dr. Till Jaeger

Till Jaeger is an attorney-at-law and partner at JBB Rechtsanwälte, a Berlin based law firm focussing on IT law. He is a Certified Copyright and Media Law Attorney with a focus on on license compliance and compatibility issues and has served as a member of the Committee C in the GPLv3 drafting process. Till Jaeger is member of the Institute for Legal Questions on Free and Open Source Software, which he co-founded with Axel Metzger to perform research on legal questions regarding the Open Source model. Together with other members of the Institute, he was involved in several legislative projects at the national and European level, such as the implementation of the EU Information Society Directive in Germany, the German Copyright Act and the discussion on the proposal for a directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions. Till Jaeger has represented his clients in several lawsuits to enforce the GPL and has published several articles and books on legal questions around Free and Open Source Software.

Dr. Till Kreutzer

Till Kreutzer is a lawyer (attorney-at-law), legal scholar and journalist. He is co–founder and publisher of iRights.info, a non-profit information portal on copyright in the digital world for consumers and creators, awarded – inter alia – with the Grimme-Online-Award 2006. He is also an entrepreneur and founder and managing partner of the iRights.Lab, an independent think tank on strategies for the digital world and the law firm iRights.Law. Till is a member of the Institute for Legal Issues of Free and Open Source Software (ifrOSS) and has published extensively on legal questions around Free and Open Source Software. He teaches copyright law, trademark law, privacy law and personal rights at various institutions (among others at the Akademie für Publizistik (Academy for Journalism), the Evangelische Journalistenschule (Evangelical School for Journalism) and the Free University of Berlin.

Dr. Catharina Maracke

Catharina Maracke is an attorney-at-law and associate professor at Keio University in Japan, where she focusses on IP law and policy, standardisation efforts for public licensing schemes, and the general interaction between law and technology. She is also a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and a member of the advisory board at the Defensive Patent License Project. Catharina Maracke has served as director at Creative Commons and as a member of Global Agenda Council on the Intellectual Property System at the World Economic Forum.

Professor Dr. Axel Metzger

Axel Metzger is Professor of Law at Humboldt University, Berlin, where he teaches civil law and intellectual property. He has served as a board member for the German Association of Law and Informatics (DGRI) and co-founded the Institute for Legal Questions on Free and Open Source Software together with Till Jaeger. He is the author and editor of numerous books and articles on intellectual property and information technology law, including a book on legal aspects of Open Source Software, co-authored with Till Jaeger.

Dr. Henriette Picot

Henriette Picot is an attorney-at-law and partner at Bird&Bird an international law firm, where she focusses on national and international projects for suppliers and users of software, hardware and innovative IT based services, advising on technology licensing, distribution, software development (including agile), e- and m-commerce, cloud computing, open source software, outsourcing and managed services transactions, IT in M&A transactions, data protection and security, as well as the legal implications of new business models in the spheres of IoT/Industry 4.0. She has published on legal implications of Free and Open Software and currently serves as a member of the International Tech and Comms Group at Bird & Bird.

Henrik Sandklef

Henrik Sandklef studied computer science at Gothenburg University and Chalmers University of Technology. Since 1997 he has worked as a consultant in software development and been actively engaged in Free and Open Source Software communities and business since 1999. Henrik has long experience in training, primarily as a University teacher. In his work with various companies and Free and Open Source organisations as well as in his own company, Sandklef GNU Labs, Henrik has gathered expertise in license compliance and has written several license compliance tools.

Keith Bergelt

Keith Bergelt is the chief executive officer of Open Invention Network (OIN), the collaborative enterprise that enables innovation in open source and an increasingly vibrant ecosystem around Linux. In this capacity he is directly responsible for enabling, influencing and defending the integrity of the Linux ecosystem. Central to the achievement of his goals is the acquisition and transfer of patent rights designed to permit members of the Linux ecosystem to operate free of the threat of assertion and litigation from those whose business models are antithetical to innovation and global economic growth in information technology and computing.

Prior to joining the Open Invention Network, Mr. Bergelt served as president and CEO of two Hedge Funds – Paradox Capital and IPI – formed to unlock the considerable asset value of patents, trademarks and copyrights in middle market companies. Paradox and IPI were the first Funds of their kind to offer specialty lending products supported exclusively by intellectual property. Driven by Mr. Bergelt’s creativity and entrepreneurial approach, these funds enabled the emergence of patents, trademarks and copyrights as a viable source of collateral in asset-based loans, forever reshaping the emerging IP Finance landscape.

Andreas Baerwald

Andreas Bärwald is Head of Software Solutions at TÜV SÜD Product Service GmbH in Munich. His team is providing services in the fields of Software Processes and Software Quality, Security, Safety and Open Source Compliance in a global setup within the TÜV SÜD Group.

Andreas is a Senior Manager and Senior Expert for Software with more than 15 years experience in different positions, representing TÜV SÜD since 2004. He worked globally as Vice President, Business Unit Manager, Team Manager, Project Manager, Technical Certifier, Assessor, Consultant, Trainer and Sales Manager. Andreas is a regular speaker at conferences, co-host of the safe.tech conference, a member of several industry and standardization committees. Andreas was participating several German and European research projects and has a close relationship to research organizations and universities.

Oliver Fendt

Oliver Fendt is governance owner of the topic Open Source Software (OSS) and other 3rd party software at Siemens. In this role he is heading the Open Source Task Force, a company wide board of experts in charge of compliant use of OSS in products, solutions and services.

Oliver has more than 16 years experience in open source software, corresponding licensing mechanism and compliance. He kicked off several initiatives to reduce compliance risks and make license compliance work more automated and more easy for all. Among these initiatives are the open source project sw360 and the sponsoring of considerable contributions to the open source project FOSSology. He has developed different trainings about open source software and how to achieve license compliance.

Oliver started his career as software developer at Siemens in 1992. He took several positions as a software developer and project leader. He built up a software development department in Portugal and was the system design authority for the development of a network management system. In 2003 he joined Corporate Technology and built up the corporate competence center embedded Linux. In 2012 he took over the responsibility for Open Source Software at Siemens in close collaboration with all divisions and corporate functions in the context of the OSS Task Force.

Ibrahim Haddad

Ibrahim Haddad (Ph.D.) is Vice President of R&D and the Head of the Open Source Group at Samsung Research America, a wholly owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics. He is responsible for overseeing software and open source strategy and execution, internal and external collaborative R&D projects, supporting M&A and Corporate VC activities, and representing Samsung on the board of open source foundations and industry consortia. Haddad also serves as Vice President of the Open Connectivity Foundation. Prior to joining Samsung Electronics, Haddad was a member of the management team at The Linux Foundation responsible for technical and open source legal compliance projects. At the Linux Foundation, he worked with the largest technology companies to facilitate a vendor-neutral environment for advancing the Linux platform for next-generation mobile services and devices.

​Haddad's career started at Ericsson Research where he spent five years in the Systems Research Lab focusing on advanced system and server research in wireless IP networks. He then joined the Open Source Development Labs and worked with major technology companies on furthering the adoption of Linux and open source in carrier grade telecom and mobile environments. He then joined Motorola as Technical Director driving Motorola's open source and collaborative initiatives. He then ran the Open Source Office at Palm where he was responsible for the webOS open source strategy and compliance. He later supported HP in a consulting role with open sourcing webOS to become the open webOS project.

Haddad graduated with Honors from Concordia University (Montréal, Canada) with a Ph.D. in Computer Science. His latest book, Open Source Compliance in the Enterprise, was published by The Linux Foundation in November 2016. Haddad is known for his writing and speaking on topics ranging from legal compliance to using open source as a business strategy and an R&D tool to drive collaboration and innovation.

Dave Marr

Dave Marr is Vice President, Legal Counsel at Qualcomm Technologies, where he currently leads the open source practice and policy team. He has been practicing in the open source legal field since 1998, delivering strategic advice to organizations and providing guidance on community licensing practices. Dave writes and speaks regularly on FOSS-related issues, their interaction with standard-setting, technology transfer best practices, licensing business models, and other subjects at the intersection of law and high technology. Prior to Qualcomm Technologies, Dave previously worked at Sun Microsystems (at various times supporting Java, OpenSPARC, and Solaris) and Juniper Networks.

Dave Kappos

David J. Kappos is a partner at Cravath. He is widely recognized as one of the world’s foremost leaders in the field of intellectual property, including intellectual property management and strategy, the development of global intellectual property norms, laws and practices as well as commercialization and enforcement of innovation‑based assets. From August 2009 to January 2013, Mr. Kappos served as Under Secretary of Commerce and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). In that role, he advised the President, Secretary of Commerce and the Administration on intellectual property policy matters. As Director of the USPTO, he led the Agency in dramatically reengineering its entire management and operational systems as well as its engagement with the global innovation community. He was instrumental in achieving the greatest legislative reform of the U.S. patent system in generations through passage and implementation of the Leahy‑Smith America Invents Act, signed into law by President Obama in September 2011.

Prior to leading the USPTO, Mr. Kappos held several executive posts in the legal department of IBM, the world’s largest patent holder. From 2003 to 2009, he served as the company’s Vice President and Assistant General Counsel for Intellectual Property. In that capacity, he managed global intellectual property activities for IBM, including all aspects of patent, trademark, copyright and trade secret protection. Mr. Kappos joined IBM as a development engineer. During his more than 25 years at IBM, he served in a variety of roles including litigation counsel and Asia Pacific IP counsel, based in Tokyo, Japan, where he led all aspects of intellectual property protection, including licensing, transactions support and mergers and acquisitions activity for the Asia/Pacific region.