Andrew Katz

Practice Areas

With over 30 years’ experience in the technology field, Andrew is a leading free and open-source software lawyer. He regularly advises clients on technology law, computer software licensing and distribution, open source licensing, business structures and compliance, open hardware licensing, open data, the legal aspects of AI, and particularly IP and regulatory aspects of large language models.

Andrew’s clients range across the spectrum of startups to multinationals and he also advises foundations, public sector bodies, academic institutions and trans-national bodies.

Andrew is a Fellow of both the Free Software Foundation Europe and the Open Forum Academy, and for seven years held the post of visiting lecturer at Queen Mary, University of London, where he taught postgraduates free and open source software law. He is co-author of Open Source Law, Policy and Practice published by Oxford University Press in 2022, as well as a number of other books and papers on open source law and technology law. He is currently a visiting researcher on standards and open source at the University of Skövde, Sweden.

He has also recently launched an initiative to manage risk in the open source and AI software supply chains, through the structures of process, procedure and insurance.

Andrew’s previous clients include:

- Canonical Limited (Ubuntu)

- The Linux Foundation

- The Eclipse Foundation

Recent work includes:

- Negotiating the business transfer of the CentOS project to Red Hat.

- Drafting the widely-used Solderpad Open Hardware License and is on the core legal team which drafted the CERN Open Hardware Licence.

- Leading the Open Hardware section of the European Commission’s Impact Study on Open Source Software and Hardware which was published in 2021. The study is frequently cited by MEPs and the European Commission in relation to EU law and policy.

Andrew has been a board member of the Telecommunications Industry Association, the MariaDB Foundation, Public Software CIC, and general counsel of OpenUK.

In 2019, he founded and became CEO of Orcro Limited, a company which provides advice and consultancy on Open Source compliance and supply chain management. Orcro is an accredited partner of the Linux Foundation’s OpenChain project.

He is project lead of the Eclipse Foundation’s Corinthian Project, a multi-national project to manage risk in the software supply chain by publishing template documents legal documents intended for use in technology transactions.

Andrew is heavily involved in the Linux Foundation’s OpenChain project, where he chairs the UK WorkGroup and the Education Work Group, and is currently working on the OpenChain Capability Maturity Model.

Additional affiliations include:

- Founding Editor of the International Free and Open Source Law Review, JOLTS (Journal of Open Law, Technology and Society)

- Advisory panel (formerly editor): Journal of Open Hardware

- Advisor: Low RISC Foundation. Technical

- Advisory Board Advisor: OpenHW Group

- Licensing Panel: FOSSi Foundation

- United Nations Technology Innovation Labs: advisory panel

- SurgHub (UN initiative for dissemination of clinical learning): advisory panel

Career

Law degree, Churchill College Cambridge University (Entrance Scholar)

Qualified 1993

Certificate in US Copyright Law, Harvard Law School/HarvardX/Berkman Center 2014