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 regularly evaluates patent rights and renders opinions with respect to invalidity, infringement and freedom-to-operate issues and design-around options. He has developed offensive and defensive litigation strategies with respect to patent infringement, patent invalidity and related issues. Mr. Pavento also regularly prepares and prosecutes domestic and international patent applications and manages domestic and international patent portfolios. He also handles patent reexamination and reissue proceedings. Mr. Pavento's areas of core technical competence include: telecom, computers and networking systems, software, e-commerce, electronic transaction processing, on-line banking, mechanical devices, bioinformatics and business methods.

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 also has significant expertise in matters relating to open source software licensing. He regularly advises clients on transactional matters and has performed countless intellectual property due diligence studies and competitive analyses in support of corporate mergers, acquisitions, IPOs and other transactions.

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 SuperLawyers Magazine.