Fred Provorny, Esq.

Program Faculty

B.S., New York University
J.D., Columbia University Law School

Professor Provorny graduated summa cum laude from New York University and magna cum laude from Columbia Law School. He was an editor of the Columbia Law Review and a Columbia University International Fellow. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute, is on the Commercial Arbitration Panel of the American Arbitration Association, is active in numerous professional organizations and has published articles in academic and professional journals. He is the founder of the Center for New Technology Enterprise. From 2004 to 2007, he was director of the Maryland Intellectual Property Legal Resource Center (“MIPLRC”) and a Visiting Professor at the University Of Maryland School of Law. For five years before taking the helm at MIPLRC, Professor Provorny was the Harold R. Tyler Professor of Law and Technology at Albany Law School and the founding Director of the New York State Science and Technology Law Center (“STLC”), the first program of its kind in the United States.

As Director of MIPLRC, he was responsible for a program that provides hands-on experience to law students and provides free intellectual property and business legal services to emerging technology companies throughout Maryland. MIPLRC developed a national reputation and built partnerships with a wide variety of stakeholders, including economic development organizations, chambers of commerce, government agencies, and other educational institutions during his tenure. 

While Director of the STLC Professor Provorny created and directed the annual SmartStart Venture Forum®, at which emerging technology companies with extraordinary prospects presented to an audience of venture capitalists and other investors from all over the East Coast, Canada, and as far away as California and Japan. 

After Professor Provorny started his career as Law Clerk to Judge Harold R. Medina of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, he joined the faculty of the Syracuse University College of Law. He has also taught at Brooklyn Law School and the University of Baltimore School of Law. In addition to practicing in his own firm and with major firms in New York City and Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Professor Provorny was an Assistant Company Counsel for Monsanto Company in St. Louis. He has served as a mentor at the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship at the Robert H. Smith School of Business of the University of Maryland. He has consulted for research institutions and entities in the private and public sectors on major matters involving technology transfer, economic development, private equity investment in the technology sector, and other issues involving the confluence of law, technology and business. Professor Provorny is an inaugural recipient of the Certified Licensing ProfessionalTM (“CLPTM”) designation and holds CPA certificates in Maryland and Missouri.

Wen Professor Provorny was in private law practice, the Industrial Biotechnology Association and the Association of Biotechnology Companies asked him to represent them in effecting their merger. The merger resulted in the creation of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, better known as BIO, which Professor Provorny represented until he went to New York. 

Mr. Provorny teaches BTEC 670: Legal and Ethical Issues.