Hackathons – Possible Legal Issues & How to Avoid Them

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Over the past year, hackathons have taken the country by storm. A hackathon is an event where programmers and others involved in software and hardware development, including graphic designers, interface designers and project managers, come together, form teams around a problem or idea, and collaboratively code a unique solution from scratch — these generally take shape in the form of websites, mobile apps, and robots. Hackathons typically last between a day and a week.

Hackathons provide a venue for self-expression and creativity through technology. It’s good to have an open collaborative environment, but it also leads to exceedingly mushy situations, in which people don’t have footing on who owns what or what rights and claims may emerge.

During this meetup we will address what can go very, very wrong without some legal activity at a hackathon, what precautionary measures can be taken during a hackathon to prevent unpleasant surprises, and what legal techniques can be used to set the right tone and expectations, and prevent small issues from spinning into huge, expensive battles down the road.