Charley Brown

Practice Areas

Charley F. Brown is Vice Chair of Ballard Spahr's Intellectual Property Department. He leads the firm’s Engineering & Software Patent Team, co-leads the firm's Artificial Intelligence and Technology Industry Teams, and is also a member of the IP Litigation Team. A registered patent attorney with deep experience in both patent prosecution and IP litigation, Charley’s practice encompasses patent, copyright, trademark, and trade secret disputes; strategic patent prosecution; client counseling; and opinion work. He provides end-to-end support for clients’ IP portfolios, including prosecution, maintenance, analysis, diligence, and enforcement. Charley is the co-editor of Artificial Intelligence & Intellectual Property, a treatise from PLI for which many attorneys from Ballard Spahr were contributing authors.

Representative technologies:

- Artificial intelligence and machine learning—large-language models, support-vector machines, hidden Markov models, computer-vision and NLP pipelines, and transfer-learning issues

- Big-data analytics, business-intelligence platforms, and cloud-native SaaS architectures

- Cybersecurity and biometric authentication solutions

- Fintech systems—payment processing infrastructure, mobile wallets, electronic funds transfer networks, algorithmic-trading engines, decentralized-finance protocols, blockchain and cryptocurrency applications, credit-scoring models, automated securities exchanges, and conversational financial chatbots

- Genomics, bioinformatics, and precision-medicine diagnostics—next-generation (short- and long-read) sequencing, single-cell and spatial omics, structural- and copy-number-variant detection, epigenomic and replication-origin analysis, liquid- and tissue-based assays, functional-genomics screens, AI-driven biomarker discovery, gene-phenotype association mapping, and clinical decision-support tools

- Medical devices and related hardware/software integrations

- Telecommunications and broadband technologies, including content-delivery networks, ad-break binding, and digital-rights-management systems

- Enterprise and consumer software platforms with open-source compliance considerations

- Industrial and environmental control systems—PLC-based and AI-assisted process-control architectures for advanced manufacturing lines and robotics, as well as high-efficiency water-filtration and treatment technologies (membrane, nanofiltration, and sensor-network platforms)

- Cable and internet technologies, data-analytics tools, computer-science innovations, and complex hardware systems

- Blockchain-based data-management and identity solutions (beyond Fintech)

- Automotive and connected-vehicle technology focused on high performance and mobility applications

This breadth of technical fluency underpins Charley's ability to craft robust IP strategies, secure and defend critical patents, and guide clients through sophisticated technology transactions and disputes.

Charley's graduate research included genome and proteome annotation techniques, sequence analysis, structure prediction, genome assembly improvement, and microarray data analysis.

Career

Admissions

Georgia

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

Professional Memberships

Professional Activities

Atlanta Intellectual Property Inn of Court

Ballard Spahr's Pro Bono Committee

Ballard Spahr's Inclusion Council

Georgia Lawyers for the Arts, Board Member