George McKinnis

Summary

I was educated in the law at Michigan Law School and was trained as a young lawyer in a prominent New York City "white shoe" law firm in corporate and financial transactions. I was recruited while in the NYC law firm to be VP and General Counsel of an merchant bank headquartered in the Bahamas, for which I did financial deals in many countries. When I returned to NYC, I became a member of ITT Corporation's Legal Department for 14 years, where I was responsible for telecom sales and deals throughout the World, was lead counsel for all of ITT's SW and computer HW product lines and was General Counsel of ITT's central R&D laboratories. I was part of the six person ITT legal team that sold all of ITT's telecom and electronics companies to CGE of France to create ALCATEL. When my portion of that huge ITT divestment was completed, I went back into private practice with ITT and ALCATEL as my first clients. I represented as an outside General Counsel a semiconductor company from startup through a public offering on NASDAQ through multiple secondary offerings and acquisitions and intellectual property litigation. I have been that company's corporate counsel with regular office hours at its headquarters from startup through today. In addition, I have been outside General Counsel of multiple SW companies and have been technology and business counsel to many startups, including one that was recently funded in Canada and is now a Canadian public company. I have handled multiple acquisitions and divestments, and have been responsible for many management as well as legal functions. I have been on the Board of Directors of a number of technology companies and am a present a director of a public Canadian technology company for which I am Chairman of their Governance Committee. I have been the Magistrate for my community for 15 years and am very active in Rotary at the Club and District levels and in a number of community non-profit activities. Specialties: Startups; outside General Counsel services; matters that have an intellectual property content, including sales and distribution agreements, teaming and joint venture agreements, SW and HW development agreements, inbound and outbound licensing and intellectual property sales and assignment agreements and relationships.