Intellectual Property in Open Projects

"While open source software is open by definition, this term applies only to the code of the project. The intellectual property (IP) of an open source project also includes other work produced to support the project, including the project’s name, logo, domain name, and website, which may be trademarked or copyrighted separate from the open source code. Project leads need to consider IP ownership of the open source code and other assets to avoid the worst case scenarios of infringement and inappropriate reuse. In 2020 we worked with Rhizome and Conifer, which is built on the open source project Webrecorder and we worked with these teams on an IP audit to help set up all parties for successful IP management.  This work was supported by a grant to Rhizome from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Here, informed by that work, we outline some simple steps that any open project can take to audit their IP to identify and remedy areas of unnecessary risk...."