The Software Freedom Law Center has released "A Legal Issues Primer for Open Source and Free Software Projects"

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Phil's picture

The document covers topics of importance to any individual or organization that sponsors, or contributes to any open source projects (which includes many, if not most of us). There are sections on Copyright, FOSS project organization and governance, Patent defenses for FOSS developers, and Common Trademark Issues. I highly recommend this primer as reading material for FOSS developers and managers alike.

The Primer can be found here:

http://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2008/foss-primer.html