Van Lindberg | |
---|---|
Born |
Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S. |
June 25, 1976
Education | B.S. Computer Engineering/History (Dual Major) Juris Doctor in Law |
Alma mater | Brigham Young University |
Occupation | Attorney, author, and software developer |
Employer | Dykema Cox Smith |
Title | Sr. Counsel |
Van Lindberg is an American attorney, software developer, and author. He currently works in the San Antonio office of Dykema, a national law firm. Since 2012, Lindberg has been a director on the Board of the Python Software Foundation, where he also currently serves as its general counsel. Prior to working at Dykema, Lindberg was Vice President and Associate General Counsel at Rackspace, an attorney at the law firm of Haynes and Boone, and as an engineer for the web hosting company Verio. Lindberg has been recognized by the American Bar Association Journal as "One of the Nation's 12 Techiest Attorneys."
Lindberg is known for his work on copyright and open source law. He is the author of Intellectual Property and Open Source, a developer-focused guide to intellectual property issues that has been used as a textbook for teaching the concepts of intellectual property and open source licensing. In 2013, Lindberg testified before the House Judiciary Committee on the importance of open source models in copyright.
Lindberg is also notable for his opposition to patent trolls. Under Lindberg, Rackspace became known for its extremely aggressive stance against patent trolls and its efforts to promote patent litigation reform, focusing on the Innovation Act in the U.S. House of Representatives and the PATENT Act, its companion in the U.S. Senate. Lindberg has appeared with Senators Chuck Schumer and John Cornyn and in videos for the Internet Association in support of the legislation.
In 2013-2014, Lindberg headed Rackspace's efforts against Rotatable Technologies, LLC, a non-practicing entity that was accusing companies of infringing patent U.S. 6,326,978 for using screen-rotation capabilities in apps running on the iOS and Android mobile operating systems. Rackspace rejected an immediate offer to settle the patent infringement case for $75,000 and instead instituted an inter partes review, leading to the patent being declared invalid. At the time of the decision, Rotatable had pending suits against 31 other companies.