Michael Pavento focuses his practice on intellectual property law. He advises established companies and start-up ventures in a wide range of intellectual property matters, including the procurement and exploitation of intellectual property rights and the management of intellectual assets.

Mr. Pavento is a registered patent attorney whose areas of core technical competence include: telecom, computers and networking systems, software, e-commerce, virtual payment card transactions and payment processing systems, on-line banking, mechanical systems and devices, bioinformatics and business methods. He regularly evaluates patent rights and renders opinions with respect to invalidity, infringement and freedom-to-operate issues and design-around options. He also regularly prepares and prosecutes domestic and international patent applications and manages domestic and international patent portfolios. He has extensive experience handling and settling patent disputes and litigation matters.

Mr. Pavento is co-chair of the firm’s Patent Reexamination & Inter Partes Disputes Team. He has handled dozens of inter partes and ex parte patent reexamination proceedings, Inter Partes Reviews and Covered Business Method Patent Reviews.

Mr. Pavento has extensive experience negotiating and drafting complex intellectual property licensing agreements and other technology transfer and development agreements, as well as M&A agreements. He regularly advises clients on transactional matters involving intellectual property and has performed countless intellectual property due diligence studies and competitive analyses in support of corporate mergers, acquisitions, IPOs and other transactions.

In addition, Mr. Pavento has significant expertise in open source software licensing. He has helped clients develop open source usage policies and implement compliance programs. He manages large-scale open source code audits and routinely advises clients with respect to compliance and remediation issues.

Mr. Pavento also prepares and prosecutes applications for state and federal trademark registrations, renders trademark clearance opinions and advises clients as to trademark usage and enforcement strategy. He counsels clients regarding protection and enforcement of copyrights and prepares applications for federal copyright registrations. He was recognized in 2012 and the two years immediately preceding as a Georgia "Rising Star" in the area of Intellectual Property by Super Lawyers Magazine.