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Foundation · Current Outbound Ask · 17 May 2026
The Foundation is at the formative operational stage and is actively seeking legal counsel
across the practice areas required to operate as a public-trust standards organization.
17 May 2026 · Sovereignty Foundation
This is the Foundation's only currently-open inbound channel. Other engagement surfaces — researcher review, implementer feedback, regulatory dialogue, press inquiries — will open once legal infrastructure is in place. Until then, the only correspondence the Foundation is responding to is from law firms or independent counsel responding to the practice areas described below.
The Sovereignty Foundation has published its substrate work, governance corpus, and standards drafts. It is operating at the formative institutional stage and the next operational gate is the engagement of qualified legal counsel across several distinct practice areas. Counsel is required before broader engagement surfaces can responsibly open. This page is the Foundation's outbound ask: which firms the Foundation is interested in engaging with, what scope each engagement contemplates, and how interested firms can respond.
Foundation & Corporate Governance
General counsel for the public-trust Foundation entity: board governance, bylaws, ratification of foundational documents, ongoing compliance, conflict-of-interest discipline, and the relationship between the Foundation and its affiliated licensing entity. Particular interest in firms with public-trust foundation or stewardship-entity experience.
IP Licensing & Commercial Structure
Drafting and review of substrate licensing instruments consistent with the IP Custody & Licensing Doctrine; formation and ongoing counsel for the affiliated licensing entity and forthcoming vertical operating entities; trademark strategy for the proposed certification marks; license-fee structures designed to preserve Foundation stewardship.
Patent Prosecution (Existing)
Patent prosecution counsel is currently engaged for the substrate IP portfolio. This area is included for completeness — the Foundation is not actively seeking additional prosecution counsel at this time but is open to introductions for specialty or co-counsel arrangements.
National Security Review & Foreign Filing License
Counsel with experience in 35 U.S.C. §§ 181-188 (Invention Secrecy Act) review proceedings, foreign filing license practice under § 184, and the operational handling of secrecy-order scenarios. Cleared counsel preferred where available.
Regulatory Engagement (AI & Standards)
Counsel familiar with the regulatory framework governing AI infrastructure: EU AI Act, NIST AISI, UK AI Safety Institute, CEN-CENELEC harmonized standards development, FTC AI guidance, and adjacent regulatory bodies. The Foundation's standards work maps to articulated assurance gaps in these frameworks; counsel is needed to navigate the engagement.
Government Engagement & Defense-Adjacent Counsel
Counsel with experience navigating DARPA, IARPA, DIU, and adjacent agency engagement — contract structures, IP rights in federally-funded research, ITAR/EAR classifications for cryptographic and AI work, and the operational implications of cleared engagements.
Records Discipline & Documentation Counsel
Counsel to advise on records-discipline standing practice for a Foundation operating at the intersection of patent law, standards development, regulatory engagement, and emerging-technology governance — what gets logged, what gets preserved, what triggers escalation, and how the documentation structure should be structured to withstand future scrutiny.
The list below identifies firms the Foundation has reached out to, is in active conversation with, or is interested in engaging. This list will be updated as engagements are formalized. Firms not on this list whose practice areas align with the Foundation's needs are invited to respond through the channel described below.
[Firm name] — [practice area] — [engagement status]
[Firm name] — [practice area] — [engagement status]
[Firm name] — [practice area] — [engagement status]
[Firm name] — [practice area] — [engagement status]
[Firm name] — [practice area] — [engagement status]
The firm list above is a placeholder. The Foundation is currently identifying the specific firms it intends to engage; entries will be populated as outreach letters are sent. Updates to this list serve as the public record of how the Foundation's legal infrastructure is being assembled.
For Law Firms Responding to This Ask
Please write to representation@sovfound.org with: (a) the practice area(s) your firm covers that align with the list above, (b) representative engagements in adjacent territory (substrate-tier infrastructure, standards-development bodies, public-trust foundations, regulatory engagement at the intersection of AI and IP), (c) the partner(s) the Foundation would be working with, (d) any preliminary scope or fee structure the firm wishes to propose. The Foundation will respond to substantive inquiries.
This email channel is operational only for responses to this specific ask. Other inquiries arriving on this channel will not be triaged at this stage.
Engagement of counsel across the practice areas listed above is the gate that allows the Foundation to open its broader engagement surfaces. With counsel in place, the Foundation can open structured channels for researchers, commentators, regulators, and press; formally charter the AGI Standard and Pulse Mesh Standard Working Groups; engage substantively with international standards bodies; accept investor and partnership inquiries through a properly-routed channel; and continue the patent prosecution and standards-development work with the legal coverage the work requires at this stage.
The Foundation publishes this page in parallel with outbound letters to specific firms, as the public-facing complement to the direct outreach. The published artifacts demonstrate the work; this page describes the institutional infrastructure being assembled to steward it.
Legal infrastructure is institutional infrastructure.
Published by the Sovereignty Foundation · 17 May 2026 · Open Until Filled
