Taking a Peek Inside Microsoft's Patent Litigation Department

Like many other corporations, Microsoft is looking to beef up its legal department, and is currently seeking a patent litigation attorney to join its staff in Redmond Washington.

Microsoft is so keen on advertising this position that they recently gave access to IP Law & Business to give a little background on their patent department:

• In 1998, Microsoft had less than a dozen patents. Today, that number exceeds 5,000.

• Over the past five years, Microsoft has been a defendant in 96 patent cases. In most of those cases, Microsoft describes the plaintiffs as "patent trolls." Over the same time period, Microsoft was a plaintiff in 11 cases.

• Microsoft's current docket has 40 pending patent cases - 15 of them are in the E.D. Texas.

• Patent litigation is approaching half of the company's legal fees. According to Thomas Burt, Microsoft's corporate vice president and deputy general counsel for litigation, "If you measure it by how much we spend on outside counsel in any given year, 40 percent-plus is patent litigation, 40 percent-plus antitrust, and the rest is everything else."

• Microsoft's in-house patent litigation team is headed by Andrew Culbert, associate general counsel, and has a staff of three patent trial lawyers and three paralegals.

Read Inside the Microsoft War Room from Law.com

Submit your resume to Microsoft here.

Funny quote on Microsoft's job page from a staff attorney: "You know that long string of legal text that pops up when you first start up your system? The one you probably never read? I wrote that!"