About Us
Alison Mortinger
Alison Mortinger is an attorney licensed to practice in Ohio. She was born in Ravenna, Ohio and grew up in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She holds a B.S. degree in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering from Cornell University, and a law degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is a registered patent attorney with over 25 years of corporate in house experience in a large variety of intellectual property matters including patent preparation and prosecution, trademarks, copyright, IP systems, open source, data, contract drafting and negotiations, and mergers and acquisitions. She managed the IP Resource Center for IBM where she trained and managed law students and recent law school graduates who handled NDA reviews, product clearance and data reviews for all of IBM worldwide. Most recently Alison was IBM’s first Corporate Trade Secret Counsel and led a worldwide effort to partner across teams to improve their trade secret management and protection program.
Alison enjoys teaching Introduction to Intellectual Property at the Ohio State (Moritz) Law School and encouraging law students to consider a career in Intellectual Property Law.
In her personal time, Alison enjoys helping young people achieve their goals in scouting, and promoting STEM careers to young women.
Steve Mortinger
Steve Mortinger is an attorney licensed to practice in Ohio. He was born in Millersburg, Ohio and spent much of his time growing up in Westerville, Ohio. An honors graduate of Denison University, Steve received a law degree from The Ohio State (Moritz) Law School. Steve continues to be an active alumnus of the Moritz Law School where he is co-chair of the University Council and where he and Alison sponsor a scholarship for Eagle Scouts attending the law school. Steve is also an adjunct professor at Ohio State’s Moritz Law School.
Steve has been practicing law for over 30 years and has had a varied set of experiences largely focused on intellectual property law, transactional work, and regulatory compliance. In his practice, Steve did everything from negotiating microelectronics (chip) deals for the design, manufacture, and sale of computer chips to all the major gaming platforms (Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo) to ultimately negotiating the sale of IBM’s Microelectronics business unit. Steve has also been lead legal counsel on many large, high-profile deals for the sale or receipt of technology. As an example, he negotiated with the US and Worldwide Olympics Committees to provide IT services to the Olympic games. He also served as lead marketing counsel for IBM’s West Coast US business in San Francisco and was the senior executive compliance officer for all of IBM’s developing markets while located in Shanghai, China. Most recently, Steve personally developed and worked with a business team to implement a comprehensive review, tagging, cataloging and intake process for 3rd party data on-boarded for use in Artificial Intelligence and other business sensitive areas.
Steve has experience with legal industry groups. He has spoken as a legal expert at numerous industry meetings on data, compliance, social media, virtual reality, intellectual property… and more. Steve provided the keynote address at a Virtual Worlds (Metaverse) conference in New York. Steve also co-founded a computer gaming committee for the American Bar Association’s Intellectual Property Section. He has written on legal matters related to computer gaming and virtual reality. Steve authored the book Computer Games and Virtual Worlds: A New Frontier in Intellectual Property Law and wrote a chapter for the book: Intellectual Property Strategies for the 21st Century Corporation.
In his personal time, Steve enjoys being outdoors in any way possible including running and camping. Steve is an Eagle Scout and, with Alison, he formed one of the first Scouts BSA Troops for girls in America.
