IP Counsel, Life Sciences Patents

About Anthropic

Anthropic’s mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. We want AI to be safe and beneficial for our users and for society as a whole. Our team is a quickly growing group of committed researchers, engineers, policy experts, and business leaders working together to build beneficial AI systems.

About the role

AI has the power to dramatically accelerate the pace of scientific discovery and the development of healthcare interventions. Alongside the models and tools we build for scientists, Anthropic’s life science research teams now run their own wet lab experiments. We’re hiring a life sciences patent counsel to work side-by-side with our researchers as they work to advance biomedical progress.

You will manage patent strategy and filings for our life sciences research, from the first conversation with a scientist through global prosecution. You will also be our in-house expert on the patent questions, many of them new, that arise when scientists use AI as a research tool. You will partner closely with our patents lead (direct manager), the Head of IP, Research Legal, our Life Sciences Counsel, and outside counsel to design and implement a patent program that supports our researchers and partners and is aligned with the company’s mission.

Responsibilities

• Manage patent strategy and filings for Anthropic’s life sciences research in the U.S. and internationally, including invention harvesting, filing decisions, drafting oversight, prosecution, and management of outside counsel
• Serve as the trusted patent advisor to our life science research teams, and design and implement scalable guidance and processes to support our fast-growing life science efforts
• Make inventorship determinations for AI-assisted research, and advise on inventor declarations and the duty of candor
• Develop claim and filing strategies across biological and chemical inventions, platform technologies, and computational methods, accounting for written description, enablement, eligibility, and obviousness
• Partner with Research Legal and Communications on the timing of publications, preprints, presentations, and open-source releases
• Advise on the patent aspects of agreements with life science and biopharma counterparties, including ownership of inventions and improvements, and support patent diligence and freedom-to-operate analyses for our research
• Anticipate emerging legal developments affecting AI technologies in the life science and biopharma space and provide strategic guidance to leadership

Minimum qualifications

• Hold a law degree (JD, LLB, or equivalent) and meet the local licensing requirements to work as in-house counsel where you'll be based
• A degree or equivalent training in a life sciences or chemistry field (for example, molecular biology, biochemistry, genetics, bioengineering, or organic chemistry)
• Substantial hands-on experience drafting and prosecuting U.S. life sciences patent applications, and directing foreign prosecution through local counsel
• Lead responsibility for a patent portfolio, including managing budget and outside or foreign counsel
• Experience making inventorship determinations and resolving ownership questions in multi-party research arrangements (for example, with universities and other partners)
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to translate legal risk into practical guidance for scientists, researchers, and business partners
• A low-ego, high-empathy orientation and a “doer” attitude: willing to roll up your sleeves and pitch in where needed
• Intense curiosity about AI and science, and a commitment to responsible AI development

Preferred qualifications

• 10+ years of patent experience (including time as a patent agent, technical specialist, or examiner) at a law firm, a biotech or pharmaceutical company, or both, with the ability to operate independently and hit the ground running
• Advanced degree in a life sciences or chemistry field
• Experience with AI/ML companies, or with inventions at the boundary of biology and machine learning
• Working knowledge of how patents interact with regulatory exclusivity, trade secrets, and open science
• Familiarity with biosecurity, dual-use research, or export control considerations in the life sciences
• Experience leveraging AI to optimize their work, with a desire to work in a fast-paced, innovative environment

The annual compensation range for this role is listed below. 

For sales roles, the range provided is the role’s On Target Earnings ("OTE") range, meaning that the range includes both the sales commissions/sales bonuses target and annual base salary for the role.

Annual Salary:$335,000—$385,000 USD

Logistics

Minimum education: Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience

Required field of study: A field relevant to the role as demonstrated through coursework, training, or professional experience

Minimum years of experience: Years of experience required will correlate with the internal job level requirements for the position

Location-based hybrid policy: Currently, we expect all staff to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time. However, some roles may require more time in our offices.

Visa sponsorship: We do sponsor visas! However, we aren't able to successfully sponsor visas for every role and every candidate. But if we make you an offer, we will make every reasonable effort to get you a visa, and we retain an immigration lawyer to help with this.

For roles performing work in California: We will consider for employment all qualified applicants, including those with arrest or conviction records or criminal histories, in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable state and local laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the City of Los Angeles’ Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act.

We encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every single qualification. Not all strong candidates will meet every single qualification as listed.  Research shows that people who identify as being from underrepresented groups are more prone to experiencing imposter syndrome and doubting the strength of their candidacy, so we urge you not to exclude yourself prematurely and to submit an application if you're interested in this work. We think AI systems like the ones we're building have enormous social and ethical implications. We think this makes representation even more important, and we strive to include a range of diverse perspectives on our team.

Your safety matters to us. To protect yourself from potential scams, remember that Anthropic recruiters only contact you from @anthropic.com email addresses. In some cases, we may partner with vetted recruiting agencies who will identify themselves as working on behalf of Anthropic. Be cautious of emails from other domains. Legitimate Anthropic recruiters will never ask for money, fees, or banking information before your first day. If you're ever unsure about a communication, don't click any links—visit anthropic.com/careers directly for confirmed position openings.

How we're different

We believe that the highest-impact AI research will be big science. At Anthropic we work as a single cohesive team on just a few large-scale research efforts. And we value impact — advancing our long-term goals of steerable, trustworthy AI — rather than work on smaller and more specific puzzles. We view AI research as an empirical science, which has as much in common with physics and biology as with traditional efforts in computer science. We're an extremely collaborative group, and we host frequent research discussions to ensure that we are pursuing the highest-impact work at any given time. As such, we greatly value communication skills.

The easiest way to understand our research directions is to read our recent research. This research continues many of the directions our team worked on prior to Anthropic, including: GPT-3, Circuit-Based Interpretability, Multimodal Neurons, Scaling Laws, AI & Compute, Concrete Problems in AI Safety, and Learning from Human Preferences.

Come work with us!

Anthropic is a public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco. We offer competitive compensation and benefits, optional equity donation matching, generous vacation and parental leave, flexible working hours, and a lovely office space in which to collaborate with colleagues. Guidance on Candidates' AI Usage: Learn about our policy for using AI in our application process.