Arroyo-Portela, Lourdes

Stephen S. Ashley, Jr. is a registered patent attorney licensed by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and has been admitted to practice law by the State Bars of North Carolina and Mississippi. He has practiced law for more than fourteen years, and has practiced exclusively in the field of intellectual property law for the past ten years.

Stephen was born in Binghamton, New York, and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he graduated from South Mecklenburg High School. He earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry from North Carolina State University, and obtained his law degree at Mississippi College School of Law.

Upon graduation from law school in 1997, Stephen worked for three years at a nationally recognized civil litigation firm in Mississippi, where he handled complex litigation such as products liability, medical malpractice and environmental cases. His work included several wrongful death cases and a national class action case arising from accidents involving Firestone tires on Ford Explorer vehicles.

In 2000, Stephen returned to his home State of North Carolina to practice at intellectual property law firms in Greensboro and Charlotte. For the past ten years, Stephen has practiced exclusively in the field of intellectual property, helping businesses and individuals protect their inventions and other intellectual property. Stephen has prepared and filed patent applications in a variety of technologies, including chemical, mechanical, medical devices, consumer products, business methods and textiles. He has also handled numerous intellectual property lawsuits, representing intellectual property owners against infringers as well as defending businesses accused of infringing patents and other intellectual property.

In 2008, Stephen started the Ashley Law Firm P.C., dedicated to providing high quality intellectual property legal services. In 2012, Stephen was elected for the fifth consecutive year to Business North Carolina's "Legal Elite" in the field of intellectual property. Each year Business North Carolina magazine sends ballots to the more than 20,000 practicing attorneys in North Carolina, and asks them which lawyers they would rate as being among the best in fourteen specific fields of law. The lawyers receiving the most votes in each category constitute Business North Carolina's "Legal Elite." About 3% of North Carolina's active attorneys were selected to the "Legal Elite" in 2012.  Stephen is also an instructor at Central Piedmont Community College’s Institute for Entrepreneurship, where he teaches a course in patent, trademark and copyright law for small business owners.

Stephen has a wife, Mary, and two children. They are members of Providence United Methodist Church in Charlotte.