NEXSEN PRUET INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW - MIKE MANN

Michael Mann has held a variety of positions of responsibility in the past 40 years.  He was commissioned a second lieutenant in the signal corps out of infantry officers’ candidate school in 1970.  After attending several army schools and serving briefly as a foreign technical intelligence officer for the Combat Developments Command, he was assigned to the First Signal Brigade in Vietnam in September 1971. 

In Vietnam, and now a first lieutenant, his assignments changed monthly.  He served as a company operations officer, an assistant battalion operations office, a battallion intelligence and security officer, a communications center officer, and the officer in charge of two task forces during the 1972 Tet Offensive in and near Hue City in Vietnam.

Returning to the US, he enrolled in graduate school at Penn State in nuclear engineering.  After acquiring his master’s degree, he worked for the Westinghouse Electric Company for six years, eventually becoming a senior nuclear engineer and having a variety of assignments including designing nuclear fuel (including mixed oxide nuclear fuel) for a commercial nuclear power reactor), supporting nuclear fuel sales, and in regulatory compliance.  He also served on a Westinghouse division patent committee as a representative for both fuel design and marketing.  For six months in 1976, he was assigned to the Westinghouse law department to assist in the massive uranium litigation task force.

From 1975-1979, he attended Duquense University’s School of Law, night division while working full time for Westinghouse.  Upon receiving his law degree in 1979, Mike was hired by Chem-Nuclear Systems, Inc., in Columbia, South Carolina, as its first in-house lawyer and regional general counsel.  Two years later, following the acquisition of Chem-Nuclear by Waste Management, Inc., of Oakbrook , Illinois, he was promoted to general counsel and then vice president and general counsel a year after that.  He remained the only lawyer in the company as it grew from $25 million in revenue to $80 million in revenue.  But the future of nuclear power and nuclear waste disposal was not bright.  Mike left in 1987 to acquire a patent practice from a Columbia-area patent attorney who was retiring.  He set up his practice in Fall of 1987 and built it to a three-lawyer firm in 1998 when he merged his firm into Nexsen Pruet Jacobs and Pollard where he has been ever since.

His experience in large organizations and particularly as a general counsel colors his practice of intellectual property law.  He understands the rhythms of both larger companies and smaller companies including technology startups.  He understands their need for information that is in a form that can be quickly grasped by management so that there is both the information and time to make important decisions.   He tends to put himself in the place of his clients when preparing information and making recommendations, not to substitute his judgment for theirs, but to try to see the decision from their standpoint and to appreciate that their decision involves many other factors.

Mike has five children.  He is married to Barbara Rackes, a well-known entrepreneur and businesswoman.  They live in Columbia.

Mike has been involved in education for a long time.  He has supported creativity in public education through various sponsorships including the Visual Literacy Festival of Richland School District I and by serving as the chairman of the board of the Harmony School, a small, private, preschool and elementary school for 8 years through 2008.  He current serves on the South Carolina Technical College System board and the Governor’s School for Science and Mathematics Foundation board.

His interests include fitness, reading, cooking and the occasional vacation.

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