Buying and Selling Technology Companies in the Open Source Era

When acquiring or selling a technology company, the deal valuation can largely depend upon the intellectual property in the company’s software source code. However, software development has completely changed in the era of open source software. There are billions of lines of freely downloadable open source code and software organizations are reusing external code without always being aware of software licensing obligations, copyrights, security vulnerabilities and other issues. At best, these issues slow M&A technical due diligence to a crawl. At worst, they can derail the deal.

Come listen to industry experts discuss ways in which you can protect your valuable intellectual property when buying and selling software assets. New methods and automated solutions can minimize risk by thoroughly analyzing software source code and uncovering issues while slashing months off of the technical due diligence cycle.

Join Black Duck Software, Focus Ventures, Oracle Corporation and the law firm of Chernoff, Vilhauer, McClung & Stenzel for a seminar on best practices in the sale of software assets in the open source era. The seminar will feature panelists with first-hand experience identifying and managing software security, licensing and other risks and issues.

What you'll learn:

• Expedite software due diligence while increasing accuracy
• Verify software origins and document the provenance of your code
• Discover and mitigate legal, security, and other issues buried in software
• Maintain code security and integrity in an increasingly challenging environment

Agenda:

• Introduction
• Black Duck Software, Protecting Software Value in a Merger or Acquisition
• IP Law Firm, Chernoff, Vilhauer, McClung & Stenzel, LLP, Potential Risks and Repercussions of unchecked Source Code
• Oracle, Software Security in the Pre- and Post Acquisition Environment
• Q&A Section

Speakers:

• Mary Ann Davidson, Chief Security Officer, Oracle
• Brenna Legaard, IP Counsel, Chernoff, Vilhauer, McClung & Stenzel, LLP
• Bill McQuaide, Executive Vice President of Products and Services

Who should attend:

Chief Counsels, Business Development Managers, General Counsels, IT General Counsels, Deputy Chief Counsels, Patent Counsel/Managers, Senior Patent Counsels, and Compliance Officers, VP Software Development, VP Engineering, VP Technology, CTO, Chief Architect, Director of Architecture, and Director of Open Source Technology

Time and Date:

7:30 am-9:30 am
Thursday, September 25, 2008

Location:

Focus Ventures
525 University Ave
Palo Alto, CA 94301

Registration:

Register Now

Black Duck Software:
tel: 781-891-5100

Focus Ventures:
tel: 650.325.7400

Chernoff,Vilhauer,McClung & Stenzel (CVMS)
tel: 503-227-5631

Black Duck Software offers products and professional services for fast, accurate and comprehensive software assessment. Black Duck has assisted in over $30 billon of M&A transactions. We provide the highest level of assurance available for technical software due diligence.

Oracle is the world's largest enterprise software company. For more information about Oracle, please visit our Web site at http://www.oracle.com/index.html.

Focus Ventures provides expansion stage venture capital for leading technology companies. They seek companies that have completed the initial development phase of their product or service, have demonstrated clear market acceptance, and are seeking additional capital to expand their sales and marketing efforts and/or to execute strategic acquisitions.

Chernoff, Vilhauer, McClung & Stenzel (CVMS) offers its clients broad experience in all facets of intellectual property law representing innovative businesses since 1970. CVMS is highly qualified to identify and protect the interests of companies and individuals whose long-term success depends on creative, meaningful and enforceable IP ownership.