Open source, protected purpose: How free legal support is safeguarding the intellectual property of social impact innovators

Design for Good (DfG) is an NGO that brings together designers from around the world with a shared goal of improving lives through human-centred design. In order to ensure as many people as possible can benefit as possible, they have decided to make their designs fully open source. This decision, however, comes with risks around Intellectual Property breaches that might, for example, include third parties registering the designs as their own trademark

To combat this issue, TrustLaw, the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s global pro bono service, connected DfG with legal firm Eversheds Sutherland, to advise on how to craft robust Intellectual Property clauses.

To celebrate this project’s nomination for a Powered by Pro Bono Award as part of the 2025 TrustLaw Awards, we caught up with Tim Cuddeford, Program Manager at Design for Good and Katherine Goodman, Associate at law firm Eversheds Sutherland to delve deeper into the impact and vision that drives their work forward.

What challenge were you facing or what legal information were you lacking?

“DfG needs partner organisations and people (donors, volunteers, implementation partners, mentors) to help us solve design problems and for the IP to be “open source” so the whole world can use the designs. This is a complex area, and we did not know how to structure the agreements.”

_{– Tim Cuddeford}

Why were you keen to work on this project?

“DfG’s work is aligned to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, such as implementing solutions to ensure that people have access to clean water and sanitary environments. I feel very strongly about supporting these programs which will have an enormous positive impact globally. As a lawyer, it’s not always easy to know how to get involved beyond donating money to various charities. This was therefore a great opportunity for me to support a project where I have been able to apply the “day job” and help DfG achieve its objectives and ensure vital funds are not diverted to paying for legal advice.”

_{– Katherine Goodman}

What did the pro bono lawyers give you to support?

“Eversheds helped redraft all of our agreements with fit for purpose Intellectual Property clauses, allowing us to quickly and confidently sign up volunteers, thus accelerating our projects.”

_{– Tim Cuddeford}

How do you feel about the impact the project has had?

“DfG operates by offering broad licences of the intellectual property (IP) created via their projects to anyone who is able to implement them. This is a forward thinking way of operating and ensures the focus stays on “doing good” and helping global communities to thrive. The work that we have done on this project has enabled them to operate using this model, ensuring regulatory compliance and retention of IP rights even as they share their designs and innovations with the wider community. The IP protocol we developed with them, which includes various licensing and assignment provisions, ensures that they own what they need to while also having the rights to license whatever they can to third parties for the greatest impact.”

_{– Katherine Goodman}

Why is it important for law firms to do pro bono projects like this?

“I think for law firms, it’s easy to get lost in the big deals and forget that our expertise can genuinely a positively impact organisations like DfG. Our legal practice includes advising our commercial clients on IP creation and ownership. As a responsible business, we are keen to share that knowledge and use our expertise to support the work of NGOs, minimising the need for them to divert vital funds to securing legal advice. Not only is it personally fulfilling for lawyers to work on pro bono projects like this, but it’s also about looking at the bigger picture and using the legal expertise we have to benefit our communities.“

_{– Katherine Goodman}

Do you have any specific learnings from the case about how to deliver a successful pro bono project that would be useful to pass on to other lawyers

“From my perspective, having a dedicated pro bono manager at the firm was incredibly helpful, as they were able to support with vetting and onboarding the client and drafting appropriate pro bono terms of engagement. These onboarding processes differ slightly to our usual process for commercial clients. For larger projects, our pro bono manager is able to recruit suitable pro bono lawyers from across our international business and practice areas and helps to centrally project manage the work.”

_{– Katherine Goodman}