Open (Source) for Business

Heather Meeker is a partner in O’Melveny & Myers’ Silicon Valley office in the Mergers and Acquisitions practice group and a Founding Portfolio Partner at OSS Capital.

Meeker advises technology clients on intellectual property matters, including licensing and collaboration arrangements, software copyright and patent issues, technology procurement, open source licensing strategies, and intellectual property issues in investments, mergers and acquisitions. She is an internationally-known specialist in open source software licensing. Her latest book, Open Source for Business, is a definitive handbook for lawyers, engineers, and businesspersons on open source licensing in business. Her Technology Licensing: A Primer, is a widely used handbook for technology licensing specialists.

In 2019, Meeker was named by Business Insider as one of the ten people transforming the way the technology industry does business, along with the CEOs of Salesforce, Stripe, and Microsoft. She was the only lawyer on this list.

Meeker is widely recognized for her leadership in intellectual property licensing law, with Chambers USA, the Legal 500, Best Lawyers in America, and SuperLawyers naming her among the industry’s top lawyers in multiple years. She received the prestigious IP Vanguard Award for private practice from the Intellectual Property Section of the California state bar for 2016. In 2012, Best Lawyers named her its “San Francisco Information Technology Law Lawyer of the Year.” In 2018, she was named one of the top Women Leaders in Tech Law by The Recorder. The Daily Journal named Meeker to its list of “Top 100 Women Lawyers in California” in 2013, and has named her twice to its list of “25 Top IP Portfolio Managers (Licensing) In California.” Managing IP named her to its “IP Stars - Top 250 Women in IP” list in 2013.

She is a member of the Advisory Council for the American Law Institute’s projects on Principles of the Law of Software Contracts (2010) and Restatement of Law, Copyright (ongoing).