Julie Akhter

Julie Akhter is a registered patent attorney with nearly 15 years of experience in patent strategy, portfolio development, licensing, and intellectual property counseling. She spent 13 years as an in-house patent attorney at Microsoft, where she counseled product groups on IP issues, analyzed and managed Microsoft’s patent portfolio, led patent licensing and sales negotiations, and championed diversity and inclusion efforts to increase the number of women and minorities both in the patent profession and among inventors.

Ms. Akhter now provides fractional in-house patent counsel services to companies, helping organizations develop and manage patent portfolios, evaluate patent strategy, and navigate intellectual property issues as they scale their technology and innovation programs. She advises clients on all aspects of patent portfolio management.

Ms. Akhter is also involved with the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), a nonprofit organization dedicated to recognizing and encouraging academic inventors who hold U.S. patents. Through her work with NAI, she contributes to initiatives that support mentorship, inventor recognition, and engagement between academic and innovation communities. She also serves on the board of the Washington State Patent Law Association.

In addition to her legal practice, Ms. Akhter has participated in initiatives aimed at broadening participation in innovation, including efforts supporting the SUCCESS Act. During her time at Microsoft, she engaged in outreach with engineering organizations such as Grace Hopper, SHPE, and NSBE and supported internal efforts to encourage women inventors.

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 earned her B.S. in Mathematics with Computer Science from MIT, an M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.