Bryan A. Sims

Bryan Sims advises software and technology companies on a wide range of commercial transactions. His experience includes corporate mergers and acquisitions, corporate and intellectual property transactional legal matters and other commercial transactions, with an emphasis on open source software (OSS) issues. He also provides advice to companies on prosecuting, protecting and managing larger corporate intellectual property portfolios.

Prior to returning to the firm, Bryan was Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary of multinational publicly-traded IT management software company, SolarWinds, Inc. (SWI). At SolarWinds, Bryan helped transform SolarWinds from a small US company into multinational software company doing business in all major international markets with offices all around the world.

He created and built the SolarWinds legal department, its licensing model and other major policies. Bryan led a team that filed and completed a successful IPO and follow-on offering. He was also responsible for assisting the company with the acquisition of 20+ companies in the US, Canada, Europe and APAC.

Earlier in his career, Bryan was Associate General Counsel and Vice President of Corporate Development and Business Affairs at open source software provider Red Hat, Inc. At Red Hat, Bryan created and ran the group responsible for legal and business negotiations associated with the company’s customer and business alliances.

He was also responsible for the company’s mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and global partnership activities. Bryan also assisted with the development of Red Hat’s intellectual property strategy (including creating a viable business model for monetizing open source software).

Education:

• Ohio State University College of Law, J.D., 1994
• Howard University, B.A., 1990