Kate Downing is an intellectual property attorney, handling licensing broadly, and specializing in open source and AI-related licensing and compliance. She started her career in-house at VMware and ServiceNow, handling commercial, product, and partnership-related matters at a time when both companies were growing rapidly. That experience showed her all the moving parts at a company at once, allowing her to design licenses, processes, and policies today that are likely to appeal to a wide variety of stakeholders, that take into account all parts of the product lifecycle, and that easily scale as a company grows. As a consequence of her experience, her counseling is exceedingly pragmatic rather than academic, quick and to the point, and often includes easily digestible guides and policies immediately useful to the broader organization.
For many clients, she essentially serves as part-time in-house product counsel, interfacing directly with Engineering, Security, and other technical teams. Other clients specifically seek out her expertise in more technical product matters. For certain clients she has functioned as an outside general counsel.
Kate’s passion for open source and open movements generally began in law school, under the tutelage of Eben Moglen, long-time attorney for the Free Software Foundation, founder of the Software Freedom Law Center, and author of the GPL 3. She interned at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and helped write the first complaint against the NSA for warrantless wiretapping. Open source expertise was a natural stepping stone into the AI domain, given the technical knowledge both require, overlapping IP issues, and an existing client base eager to always be at the cutting edge of innovation.
The Law Offices of Kate Downing were founded in 2017 and include associate attorneys from time to time. Kate is a board member of the PolyForm Project and a member of the Blue Oak Council. She is also an advisor to FOSSA. Kate is licensed to practice in California and Washington state. Kate graduated from Columbia University School of Law (Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar) and Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business (Magna Cum Laude) with a double major in Finance and International Business. You can learn more about Kate Downing here.