Head of IP

Pay in the destination countries

Monthly, in US dollars. Each country is an Imora admission package — open one for that route's fees, language requirement and deadline.

What does the day look like?

Most of your day is meetings, documents and budget. You review invention disclosures from R&D, sit in the Patent Review Committee, and decide for each invention whether to file, maintain, abandon, or keep it as a trade secret. You direct outside law firms on filing and prosecution before the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the European Patent Office, the Japan Patent Office and the China National Intellectual Property Administration, and you audit their bills. You negotiate joint venture agreements, cross-licensing deals and technology transfer terms, run IP due diligence in M&A, and manage infringement disputes, Freedom-to-Operate clearances, oppositions and litigation defence, within a 7-figure IP budget.

The split is 30% people and budget management, 25% R&D and business alignment to a 3-to-5-year product roadmap, 25% contracts, licensing and due diligence, 15% risk, litigation and FTO, and 5% direct patent drafting or claim review. That 5% is the glamorous part teenagers picture. The other 95% is management, negotiation and paperwork. Hours are 45 to 55 hours per week in an office. No shifts and no night work, but high stress around litigation injunctions, cross-border M&A closings, or critical product launches. Your tools are CPA Global/Clarivate FoundationIP, Anaqua, Dennemeyer DIAMS iQ, AppColl, PatBase, Derwent Innovation, Questel Orbit, LexisNexis PatentSight, Thomson Reuters Legal Tracker, SAP and LexisNexis CounselLink.

Where does this lead?