%0 Journal Article %J Open Source Business Resource %D 2009 %T Licensing of Open APIs %A G.R. Gangadharan %X Two major trends in software development today are the open source paradigm and the notion of software as a service. The combination of these has lead to the concept of open APIs and mashups. Since late 2005, there has been a rapid proliferation of applications, referred to as mashups, that combine data and services provided by third parties through open APIs with data sources owned by users. Open APIs give users access to the data or services of an information technology platform. A well-known example is the Google Maps API, which generates maps for a given location, whose output can be combined with other data and services into mashups. Combining services and data from multiple sources raises several issues related to intellectual rights in mashups. However, the concept of mashups is currently in a nascent stage, and service and data providers often underestimate the relevance of these issues. In this paper we give an overview of open API licensing and provide examples from current open APIs. We then briefly discuss licensing of open APIs. %B Open Source Business Resource %I Talent First Network %C Ottawa %8 04/2009 %G eng %U http://timreview.ca/article/243 %N April 2009 %9 Articles %1 Novay Dr. G.R. Gangadharan is a research scientist at the Novay (Telematica Institute), Enschede, The Netherlands. His research interests are mainly located on the interface between the technological perspective and the business perspective. His research interests include Service Oriented Computing, Internet Software Engineering, Intellectual Property Rights, Free and Open Source Systems, and Business Models for Software and Services.