Paul E. Franz '99

Paul E. Franz is a principal in the Atlanta office of Fish & Richardson P.C. Mr. Franz provides patent counseling services for a wide variety of clients ranging in size from individual inventors to large companies. He has developed patent portfolios for startup companies, and also manages complex patent portfolios for large companies. His law practice also encompasses non-infringement and invalidity opinions, due diligence, licensing, and export controls. Mr. Franz's technology areas include the electrical and mechanical engineering arts and software technology areas, with an emphasis on: computer architecture; machine learning; user interfaces; speech and handwriting recognition; search engines; application indexing; parallel computing; operating systems; cloud computing; virtual machines; location-bases services; e-commerce; databases; and advertising. Prior to becoming a lawyer, Mr. Franz was an electrical engineer for the U.S. Department of the Navy for eight years. During this time, Mr. Franz was involved in the certification and testing of digital sonar systems and Tomahawk fire control systems. Mr. Franz is also a licensed professional engineer in Washington.