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Corporate Legal Counsel

General Counsel
Deputy General Counsel
Chief Compliance Officer / Chief Governance Officer
Associate General Counsel
Assistant General Counsel
VP or Senior Counsel for Intellectual Property
Patent Counsel

About Job Titles and the hierarchy within corporate structures and in the respective IT Departments.
Each company will call the various IT positions by other names since each company’s structure will be different from one another. This will partially depend on the size of each company, the job descriptions and who the IT professionals work for and under.

Patent Counsel

Patent attorneys have more consistent rules, permitting them to draft stronger patents. As a result, more patents are being upheld by the courts. Moreover, damages in some patent infringement cases have reached the hundreds of millions of dollars. Litigation costs win or lose, are extensive. In view of both the cost of litigation and potential damages, every company should consider taking steps both to strengthen its own patent portfolio and to decrease its risk of infringing another’s patent when conducting the company’s business. Patent attorneys help determine what patent rights the company already has or may develop or acquire, reviewing the company’s products for infringement of others’ patent rights, and establish policies and procedures focused on an appropriate treatment of inventions and patents for the company’s business. Patent attorneys have to have an EE or CS Degree, along with a juris doctorate (JD). They should have two to three years of patent drafting and prosecution experience. They will need engineering knowledge, relevant experience, and a technical background and should be registered to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Highly skilled attorneys are in demand and employment opportunities should remain strong for the coming year. Salary increases have been on average about 5.9% for IP counsel. Attorneys who have five-plus years of experience and patent trial and prosecution experience are sought by intellectual property firms and corporate legal departments especially in the information technology arena. Attorneys in this area of law can expect to receive salaries from a range between $185,000 and $200,000. Yet, the longer these IP attorneys are with a company providing excellent guidance resulting in corporate growth, bigger raises will continue to be given out along with incentive bonuses that can substantially increase the compensation package.

Some responsibilities for the Patent Counsel include:

Work closely with all levels of a technical team to gather, understand and document innovation across a variety of disciplines
Work directly with, and supervise, outside patent counsel for the drafting and prosecution of patent applications (domestic and foreign)
Develop and manage internal IP policies and controls
Develop and maintain intelligence on patents of particular interest, including the IP assets of other companies, particularly the competition
Establish and oversee the company’s patent law library