News
Red Hat announces new appointments to expand intellectual property law expertise and to share best practices
March 2008 by Marc Jacob
Red Hat announced the appointment of intellectual property experts Robert Tiller, as Vice President and Assistant General Counsel, and Richard Fontana, as Open Source Licensing and Patent Counsel. Both will report to Executive Vice President and General Counsel, Michael Cunningham.
Tiller brings over 20 years of legal expertise to Red Hat and joins the Company from Helms, Mulliss & Wicker, where he gained experience in intellectual property and technology litigation, commercial litigation and antitrust. Previously, Tiller was an Associate Partner at Parker, Poe, Adams & Bernstein, focusing on intellectual property and technology, business torts and employment, education and general commercial litigation. Tiller also held roles as Associate for Onek, Klein & Farr, as Clerk for Antonin Scalia of the United States Supreme Court and as Clerk for Stephen Williams of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Tiller earned his J.D. From the University of Virginia School of Law and received his bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College.
At Red Hat, Tiller will be responsible for overseeing the Company’s internal intellectual property team, with responsibilities covering open source licensing, copyright, patent and trademark. Additionally, Tiller will work on the development of new policies and strategies related to legal issues in open source.
Fontana most recently served as Counsel for the Software Freedom Law Center, where he partnered with Eben Moglen to advise the Free Software Foundation on the drafting of version 3 of the GNU General Public License. In this role, Fontana drafted GPLv3 license provisions, analyzed and advised clients on competing proposals, conducted the public GPLv3 discussion process, led GPLv3 discussion committees and researched matters of U.S. and international copyright and patent law.
Prior to his work on GPLv3, Fontana prepared and prosecuted patent applications as an Associate at Darby & Darby, P.C. and Leydig, Voit & Mayer, Ltd. At Rogers & Wells, he was an Associate in the firm’s Litigation Department, where he worked in intellectual property, antitrust and securities litigation practice groups. Fontana received his J.D. From the University of Michigan Law School, earned master’s degrees in Computer Science from New York University and Yale University and obtained his bachelor’s degree in History from Wesleyan University.
At Red Hat, Fontana will manage matters relating to patents and open source licensing. He will also serve as a Red Hat liaison with the open source community on licensing issues.
Fontana will be based at Red Hat’s Westford, Mass. office. Tiller will be based at Red Hat’s headquarters in Raleigh, N.C.
