Scott Frank is the President & CEO of AT&T Intellectual Property LLC. He is responsible for the identification, development, protection, management, marketing, licensing and sale of all company-wide intellectual property for AT&T, the world’s largest communications company and the owner of one of the world’s most valuable intellectual property portfolios.
Frank was named President & CEO of AT&T Intellectual Property in March of 2007 following the December 2006 merger of AT&T and BellSouth, where Frank had previously been the President of Intellectual Property. Frank joined BellSouth in 1998 and led the effort in forming the BellSouth Intellectual Property companies.
When Frank started in 1998, BellSouth had less than 50 patents issued in its first fourteen years and had not proactively marketed its IP. At the time of the merger, BellSouth Intellectual Property had more than 1000 patents, had been recognized by BusinessWeek for the significant value of their patent portfolio, and added significant dollars to BellSouth’s bottom-line from its IP marketing efforts.
Frank led the building of a corporate-wide innovation program called The Innovation Pipeline, also known as TIP, which uses crowd sourcing to get innovative ideas from employees corporate-wide implemented quickly by AT&T. His IP organization has also grown the patent portfolio significantly to over 10,000 patents worldwide, been recognized by the Wall Street Journal as the #2 most valuable patent portfolio in telecom behind only Qualcomm, and has successfully licensed and sold patents, trademarks and copyrighted technology to add billions of dollars to AT&T’s bottom line.
Frank is Chair and President of the Georgia Intellectual Property Alliance. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Intellectual Property Owners Association; Chair of the Georgia Tech and Georgia State University Intellectual Property Advisory Boards; a member and former Chair of the Board of Directors of the Georgia Tech Research Corporation; a former White House Advisor on International Trade Related to Intellectual Property; and former Chair of the State Bar of Georgia’s Intellectual Property Law Section.
He is currently the Board Chair of the Swift School for Dyslexic children and is former Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors of the Mary Hall Freedom House, an organization that rehabilitates women with addiction problems. Frank is also a member of the Atlanta Rotary, which brings business people together for the greater public good.
Prior to joining AT&T/BellSouth, Frank practiced intellectual property law in Atlanta at Troutman Sanders LLP. Prior to Troutman Sanders, Frank was an electrical engineer with Nortel and a computer systems analyst with AT&T.
Frank received his Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Tech, and his Law Degree and Masters in Business from Georgia State University.
Frank lives in Atlanta, Georgia, and is married with four children.