Julie Akhter

Julie Akhter is a registered patent attorney with nearly 15 years of experience in in-house patent counseling, patent analysis, patent licensing, and portfolio development. 

She also has extensive experience in programs to increase the number of diverse inventors supporting the SUCCESS Act.   Ms. Akhter counsels clients in all aspects of patent portfolio management, with experience built from 13 years working as an in-house patent attorney at Microsoft.

During her time at Microsoft, she counseled product groups on IP issues, analyzed and maintained Microsoft’s patent portfolio, led patent licensing and sale negotiations, and championed diversity and inclusion efforts to increase the number of women and minorities both in the patent professional field and as inventors. 

Julie also led Microsoft’s IP group’s diversity and outreach efforts with external engineering groups such as Grace Hopper, SHPE, and NSBE for many years and led Microsoft’s internal women inventorship taskforce.

Ms. Akhter is also involved with the National Academy of Inventors, a non-profit founded to recognize and encourage academic inventors with U.S. patents.  She oversees several programs with the National Academy of Inventors, including the GAIN mentorship program, the NAI Invention Ambassador Program in partnership with the USPTO, and the ScholarShare webinar series.

Prior to moving in-house, Ms. Akhter was a patent attorney at Morrison & Foerster in Silicon Valley and a patent agent at Darby & Darby in Seattle. She obtained her B.S. in Mathematics with Computer Science at MIT, an M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.