Augustin to Discuss Intellectual Property Strategies and the Impact of Trademarks on Free Software Projects

CUPERTINO, Calif.–SugarCRM, the world’s leading provider of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software, today announced that CEO Larry Augustin will participate in two panel discussions at this year’s Open Source Convention (OSCON) in San Jose. Augustin’s sessions will focus on what companies need to consider when implementing and enforcing open source licensing and trademarks.

Session Details 1:

Topic: This presentation will discuss how companies make decisions about which licenses to use for an open source project or an open source company.

Participants: Larry Augustin and Vicky Lee, partner, DLA Piper

Date and time: Wednesday, July 22, 2009 at 10:00 a.m. PT

Location: Room Willow Glen 1, San Jose Marriott

Session Details 2:

Topic: This panel will discuss whether it is useful to register a trademark and, if so, how to permit its use by others. The panel will also evaluate various policies and enforcement strategies from corporate and non-profit perspectives.

Participants: Larry Augustin will be joined by Karen Sandler, attorney, Software Freedom Law Center; Simon Phipps, chief of open source solutions, Sun Microsystems; Gervase Markham, project coordinator for the Mozilla Foundation and Chris Messina, board member of the OpenID Foundation

Date and time: Friday, July 24 at 10:45 a.m. PT

Location: Meeting room B3, San Jose Convention Center

Now in its eleventh year, OSCON will focus on the biggest issue in open source today—the rapid acceleration of new technological innovations, and how the industry will define, maintain and extend the definition of open source through the next ten years. Over the course of four days, keynotes from Google, Microsoft, Infotrope, Intel, Mozilla, Canonical Ltd. and The Linux Foundation will preview the future of open source by revealing how it is already being used by the industry’s top enterprises and vendors to push the envelope on innovation while coming in under budget.

For more information about OSCON 2009, visit: http://en.oreilly.com/oscon2009. Additionally, to hear more from Larry Augustin on the state of open source and other related topics, please visit his blog at: http://lmaugustin.typepad.com/.

About SugarCRM

SugarCRM is the world’s leading provider of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software for companies of all sizes. Sugar easily adapts to any business environment by offering a more flexible, cost-effective alternative than proprietary applications. SugarCRM’s open source architecture allows companies to more easily customize and integrate customer-facing business processes in order to build and maintain more profitable relationships. SugarCRM offers several deployment options, including on-demand, on-premise and appliance-based solutions to suit customers’ security, integration and configuration needs. For more information, call (408) 454-6900 or 1 87 SUGARCRM toll free in the US, email contact@sugarcrm.com, or visit http://www.sugarcrm.com.