Gaines Carter

Gaines Carter is an Intellectual Property (IP) attorney, a registered patent attorney and a former software engineer who focuses his practice on protecting and defending ownership rights related to the development, registration and use of business ideas, inventions, designs, technology, trademarks and other proprietary solutions and services.

Gaines helps his clients implement best legal practices involving local and worldwide privacy law compliance (GDPR, CCPA, etc.); the development and audit of internal controls and policies/procedures; ethics, contracts internal/external training on privacy as well as the full range of intellectual property issues. As a registered patent attorney, Gaines defends clients in state and federal courts on infringement involving patents, trade secrets, trademarks, copyrights and contracts. As a former software engineer he leverages first-person understanding of research and development, registration, sales, performance, ownership, marketing, licensing and contracts, as well as how users, employees, third-parties and businesses engage with and use intellectual property.

Prior to joining KPPB LAW, Gaines spent nearly two decades with ARRIS International (now CommScope) as legal vice president of corporate and regulatory. In that role, he prepared and managed patent litigation and was responsible for 114 legal entities around the globe. During his tenure, ARRIS grew revenue from a $600M, mostly US sales, into an $8B global enterprise complying with both U.S. SEC laws and U.K. laws. In addition to intellectual property protection and legal entity oversight, Gaines was involved with all aspects of U.S. and international mergers/acquisitions/dissolutions as well as bankruptcy transactions in the U.S., as well as India, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Australia.

Gaines spent more than a decade in software engineering initially developing network operating system software then working as a computer scientist for Stanford Research Institute before earning his law degree. As an engineer, he has written simulation software to optimize throughputs for factories and consulted as a military contractor in the design of factories and simulations of factories for the military.

He is a member of the Federal Patent Bar, the State Bar of Michigan and the State Bar of Georgia. Gaines is the past president of the Privacy and Technology Section of the State Bar of Georgia. As a speaker on topics involving ethics, FCPA, GDPR, privacy and IP, he last participated in a privacy law panel at a tech business conference in Serbia.

Gaines earned his law degree at Michigan State University. He clerked for a Michigan judge while in law school and then joined a 30-attorney patent law firm (first as a clerk and then associate) in Michigan. A native of Charleston, SC, Gaines earned his undergraduate degree in computer science from Clemson University. He is based in the Atlanta office of KPPB LAW.