Stephen M. Risley

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Stephen M. Risley — Patent Litigation Practice Summary

Stephen R. Risley is a partner at Kent & Risley LLC in Alpharetta, Georgia, where he heads the firm's litigation practice group and is a co-founder (the firm was launched in 2016 with Daniel A. Kent as a two-lawyer IP litigation boutique). He is a registered patent attorney (USPTO Reg. No. 35,659) whose practice spans patent, trademark, copyright, and trade-secret litigation, plus PTO proceedings. His firm and directory profiles describe patent work across electrical/computer/Internet technologies, mechanical and electro-mechanical inventions, chemistry, biotech/life sciences, and design patents, along with software, telecommunications, medical devices, and automotive/vehicle systems. No Wi-Fi-standard-essential or SEP-focused work is described in any source reviewed. (Note: this is Stephen R. Risley of Kent & Risley, not the similarly named Houston attorney Stephen Frank Myers Risley.)

Side preference. The tracked appearance record is thin — a single plaintiff-side entry, as local counsel — and cannot by itself establish a side preference. In that matter, Vision Works IP Corp. v. Subaru of America, Inc. (N.D. Ga. 1:24-cv-00961), he served as local counsel for an NPE plaintiff asserting a family of "absolute acceleration sensor for use within moving vehicles" patents against Subaru's Vehicle Dynamics Control, EyeSight driver-assist, Auto Start Stop, and MySubaru app features. His own firm biography, by contrast, describes both patent enforcement and patent defense, and publicly searchable dockets include defense-side representation (e.g., representing the defendants in a 1998 mechanical/bakery-equipment patent suit and in a 2025 N.D. Ga. copyright action). The accurate characterization is a mixed plaintiff/defendant practice, with the tracked data capturing only the plaintiff-side engagement.

Notable matters and PTAB/IPR experience. His most prominent verified PTAB role is as lead counsel for patent owner Alexsam, Inc. in the covered-business-method reviews MasterCard International Inc. v. Alexsam, Inc., CBM2017-00041 and CBM2017-00042, concerning U.S. Patents 6,189,787 and 6,000,608; institution was denied in CBM2017-00041 (Sept. 2017), and CBM2017-00042 was terminated after institution (post-institution fees refunded Jan. 2018). This reflects occasional, substantive PTAB patent-owner work rather than a high-volume IPR/PGR docket, and his biography also cites interference and reexamination practice. In the Vision Works litigation, no verdict, judgment, or settlement is publicly verified; the docket was last updated in mid-2024, and the asserted '769 patent has since drawn an ex parte reexamination request by Unified Patents (filed March 2026), which the Central Reexamination Unit granted in April 2026 on substantial new questions of patentability. Notably, publicly reported dockets show Vision Works subsequently filed similar suits against numerous automakers (Tesla, Nissan, Jaguar Land Rover, and others), but Risley's own appearance in those later cases is not confirmed.

Prior firms and credentials. Before Kent & Risley he was a partner at Smith Risley Tempel Santos (2009), a partner at Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi (2005), and a founding partner of Thomas, Kayden, Horstemeyer & Risley (1996); earlier posts include Hopkins & Thomas (Atlanta, from 1992), Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein & Fox (Washington, D.C.), and a clerkship at Merchant & Gould (Minneapolis). He holds a J.D. from Hamline University School of Law (now Mitchell Hamline; sources give 1990 or 1992) and an LL.M. from George Washington University, with a B.S. in Biology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is admitted in the District of Columbia (1990), Georgia (1992), and Virginia, before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and the Court of Federal Claims, and is registered to practice before the USPTO.