Rob Tiller

1090 points

Raleigh, NC

Rob Tiller is vice president and assistant general counsel for Red Hat, where he manages patent, trademark, and copyright matters. He is a frequent speaker and writer on open source legal issues. Before coming to Red Hat, he was a partner with the law firm of Helms, Mulliss & Wicker, PLLC, where he specialized in commercial and IP litigation. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law, and a former clerk for Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court, and Judge Stephen Williams of the D.C. Circuit. For non-left-brain activity, he enjoys playing the piano.

Open Source Champion Author Founding Member

Authored Content

Year-in-Review: Law hot topics on Opensource.com

The most-read posts this year on the Opensource.com Law channel showed a strong interest in diverse legal issues in the open source world. Many readers were reaching out for a…

Ginormous losses from NPE software patent lawsuits

Law professors weigh in against abusive patent litigation by PAEs

With patent reform legislation moving forward, an impressive group of law professors weighed in last week in favor of reform. The group submitted a letter to Congress that…

The role of software patents in the patent reform debate

Momentum seems to be building in Congress to tackle patent reform. From an open source perspective, any reform that reduces the risk and expense of patent lawsuits is surely a…

More voices join the chorus for patent reform

Patent reform is hot! The momentum seems to be building in Congress for patent reform to address the problem of nefarious patent exploiters (also known as non-practicing…

Judges split on software patents and computer transubstantiation

The law of software patents took an interesting, and ultimately encouraging, turn a little more than a week ago. In the CLS Bank case, ten judges of the Federal Circuit issued…

Software patents: The talk of 2012

Looking back over the law channel posts of 2012, I was not surprised to see that software patents were a major concern. The high volume of significant patent lawsuits of…

Authored Comments

rtiller

4 Feb 2011

A possible game changer for invalidating bad software patents

Fair enough. I'm with you that words matter, and appreciate the struggle to find the most effective ones.

rtiller

3 May 2010

Total victory for open source software in a patent lawsuit

Wow, I'm not sure how the discussion jumped from winning a patent case that benefits open source to being opposed to the public interest. I've heard the argument before that patents are such bad things that we should have nothing to do with them, and I think it's unrealistic. As my predecessor, Mark Webbink, used to say, we've got to live in the world as it is. I have great respect Bradley, and am happy for him to express his opinion. But having just completed a long hard fight against some bad patents, and having just won a jury verdict in favor of open source software, I'm surprised to see this.