My name is Jacob Toll, and I’m a current 3L on the Intellectual Property and Technology Law track. Over the summer I had the pleasure of working at Northrop Grumman as a member of the Intellectual Property and Strategic Technology Agreements (IP&STA) team. In my prior roles, I frequently worked with engineers and inventors in a patent litigation and anti-counterfeiting setting, and cherish the fact that I was able to further work in an advanced technological setting with brilliant engineers at Northrop Grumman.
Our team held many key responsibilities, but the most notable, in my opinion, was hosting the IP committee, where we reviewed intellectual property disclosures alongside subject-matter experts, submitted by our engineers. Upon review, our team executed decisions whether inventions would be sent to outside counsel for patent prosecution before the United States Patent and Trademark Office, or maintained in-house as a company trade secret. In addition to this work, I conducted extensive research on our patented technologies for the purpose of advising our corporate legal team, and outside counsel on the decision to file patents abroad.
These tasks provided a unique opportunity for me to grow my knowledge of managing an ever-growing IP portfolio. One of the more rewarding experiences from this summer came from hosting our IP awards ceremony, where our engineers who had patents granted or established trade secrets receive a customized plaque to commemorate their tremendous achievements.
Another part of working on the IP&STA team involved aiding in the drafting and editing for technology licensing agreements between Northrop Grumman and our third-party partners.
With the majority of my work experience until this point being litigation-focused, I was eager to grow my knowledge and experience with transactional work. I was able to expand my horizons working on licensing agreements, as well as review and approve documents containing sensitive information before its release to third parties.
While I unfortunately cannot share significant details about the fascinating technologies or substantial transactions I had the chance to work with, I am incredibly thankful to my amazing team and incredible engineers this summer who worked to help me grow and advance my knowledge as a law student.