Black Duck Software says that, while in-house legal teams and software developers are being held accountable for their company's software intellectual property, many find that they're trying to solve IP issues at the end of the development process.
The Waltham, Massachusetts-based company observes that decisions made at this point, under the pressure of a product shipment deadline, may not be based on the best information.
So it has launched a service called protexIP/license management. According to Black Duck, it incorporates legal teams into the entire software development process, providing timely resolution of licensing issues as they arise. By identifying, tracking, and resolving these issues early, companies can avoid delays, costly source code reviews, or potential legal problems.
"As open source and third party components proliferate and become nested in increasingly complex applications, the challenge of assuring compliance with licensing obligations becomes overwhelming without a comprehensive compliance platform," said Karen Copenhaver, Black Duck's executive vice president and general counsel. "protexIP/license management empowers the lawyer's oversight of the development process, from helping define and implement open source policy to approval of software release."
Lawyers interact with protexIP/license management using Black Duck's web console. They translate their company's software licenses into a set of license attributes. Once entered, lawyers and developers can be immediately informed of potential conflicts with business policies, and of issues relating to license compliance.