John R. Harris

Harris is a Partner in the technology/intellectual property group of Morris, Manning & Martin LLC, and is a registered patent attorney. For the past 29 years, Harris has advised clients in the electronics, computer, financial services and Internet industries on intellectual property matters. As a former computer system design engineer at Harris Corporation (which he said regrettably had no connection to his relations), Harris designed electronic printing, data compression and word processing systems. His experiences as a lawyer range from helping in the early stages of patent programs at Scientific-Atlanta, Microsoft, BellSouth Corporation and Hayes Microcomputer Products, to numerous entrepreneurial startups. Harris has extensive experience counseling clients, preparing and prosecuting patent applications, rendering patent opinions and freedom to operate (FTO) analyses, and negotiating transactions involving various technologies including electronic commerce systems, financial services business models and payment systems, telecommunication technologies including cellular and mobile devices, video signal processing, data compression, computer architecture, medical devices, manufacturing systems, robotics, energy management, visual systems for flight simulation and video gaming, distributed database systems, computer software and many other technologies. He holds a BEE with honors from Georgia Tech, a JD from Emory University School of Law and an MBA from the Goizueta School of Business at Emory University.