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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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Speaker: Mr. Scott M. Frank, President and CEO – AT&T Intellectual Property
Seminar Title: The Critical Role Intellectual Property Plays in a Knowledge Economy
Speaker Bio:
Scott was named President & CEO of AT&T Intellectual Property in March of 2007 following the December 2006 merger of AT&T and BellSouth, where Scott had previously been the President of Intellectual Property. Scott joined BellSouth in 1998 and led the effort in forming the BellSouth Intellectual Property companies.
When Scott started in 1998, BellSouth had less than 50 patents issued in its first fourteen years and had not proactively marketed its IP. At the time of the merger, BellSouth Intellectual Property had more than 1000 patents, had been recognized by BusinessWeek for the significant value of their patent portfolio, and had added over a half billion dollars to BellSouth’s bottom-line from its IP marketing efforts.
Since 2007, Scott has led the building of a corporate-wide innovation program called The Innovation Pipeline, also known as TIP, which uses crowd sourcing to get innovative ideas from employees corporate-wide implemented quickly by AT&T. His IP organization has also grown the patent portfolio significantly to approximately 10,000 patents worldwide, and has successfully licensed and sold patents, trademarks and copyrighted technology to add hundreds of millions of dollars to AT&T’s bottom line.
Scott is a member of the Board of Directors of the Intellectual Property Owners Assoc., where he is former Chair of the Corporate IP Management Committee; Chair of the Georgia State University Law School’s Intellectual Property Advisory Board; member of the Board of Directors of the Georgia Tech Research Corporation; member of the Industry Trade Advisory Committee on Intellectual Property Rights (ITAC 15)and former Chair of the State Bar of Georgia’s, Intellectual Property Law Section. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Mary Hall Freedom House, an organization that helps and rehabilitates women with substance abuse and domestic violence problems.
Prior to joining AT&T/BellSouth, Scott practiced intellectual property law in Atlanta at Troutman Sanders LLP for 7 years. Prior to Troutman Sanders, Scott was an electrical engineer with Nortel for 5 years, and a computer systems analyst with AT&T for 2 years.
Scott received his Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Tech, and his Law Degree and Masters in Business from Georgia State University.
Scott lives in Atlanta, Georgia, and is married with four children.
