Duties & Responsibilities
Strategic Business Partnership & Patent Strategy
- Serve as embedded IP business partner; attend engineering, product, roadmap, and sales reviews on a recurring cadence. Develop deep technical fluency to engage substantively.
- Drive patent claim strategy designed to read on competitor products and roadmaps; lead competitive teardowns and reverse-engineering with engineering and outside vendors.
- Conduct infringement and FTO analyses; set filing, continuation, and abandonment strategy aligned with business objectives.
- Identify monetization opportunities: SEP declarations and licensing, assertion campaigns, defensive cross-licensing, and divestiture candidates.
- Triage non-IP legal issues and route to appropriate L&GA SMEs while owning the IP workstream end-to-end.
Portfolio Management, Risk & Commercial Support
- Direct and supervise outside counsel on U.S. and foreign drafting, filing, and prosecution; manage budgets and quality; draft personally for strategically critical inventions.
- Lead invention harvesting; coach inventors; adopt AI tools across invention identification, prior art / FTO search, drafting, and analytics.
- Support patent litigation and pre-litigation matters; lead clearance and FTO for new products and acquisition targets.
- Support IP aspects of commercial agreements (NDAs, JDAs, supply agreements, licenses, M&A diligence).
PRC-Specific Responsibilities
- Primary L&GA point of contact for IP in the PRC: manage CNIPA filings, prosecution, and outside counsel relationships in China.
- Manage technology-localization decisions for Chinese-developed inventions (PRC-first vs. global filing); structure filings and disclosures to minimize cross-border legal and regulatory friction.
- Coordinate with trade compliance on PRC and U.S. export-control, technology-transfer, and dual-use considerations.
- Advise on patent-vs.-trade-secret decisions, employee/contractor controls, and PRC IP assignment practices; support "high-technology entity" (高新技术企业) status maintenance.
- Conduct IP training, invention harvesting workshops, and competitive-landscape sessions at PRC sites; travel within the PRC as needed.
Technical Domain Focus
- Telecommunications: coherent optical transmission, WSS, ROADMs, and related long-haul / metro network technologies.
- Advanced optics: precision components, specialty fiber, optical coatings (telecom, defense, industrial, instrumentation).
- Semiconductor optoelectronics: EMLs, DMLs, VCSELs, photodetectors, modulators; wafer-level processes, epitaxial growth, and device packaging.
- Optical transceivers and datacom: 400G / 800G / 1.6T, co-packaged optics, linear-drive and linear pluggable optics for AI / hyperscale data centers; DSP and driver/TIA electronics where they intersect.
Qualification & Requirements
- Operates as a true business partner — not a service provider — with strategic mindset on patents as competitive and monetization instruments.
- Advanced verbal and written fluency in Mandarin Chinese and English; able to draft and negotiate in both languages.
- Deep familiarity with PRC IP, trade secrets, employment, and technology-export regulatory environment; pragmatic handling of cross-border IP and tech-transfer.
- Strong outside-counsel and project management across geographies; able to operate independently as on-the-ground L&GA presence in the PRC while staying tightly connected to the global IP function.
- Operates as a true business partner — not a service provider — with strategic mindset on patents as competitive and monetization instruments.
- Advanced verbal and written fluency in Mandarin Chinese and English; able to draft and negotiate in both languages.
- Deep familiarity with PRC IP, trade secrets, employment, and technology-export regulatory environment; pragmatic handling of cross-border IP and tech-transfer.
- Strong outside-counsel and project management across geographies; able to operate independently as on-the-ground L&GA presence in the PRC while staying tightly connected to the global IP function.
Culture Commitment
Ensure adherence to company’s values (ICARE) in all aspects of your position at Coherent Corp.:
Integrity – Create an Environment of Trust
Collaboration – Innovate Through the Sharing of Ideas
Accountability – Own the Process and the Outcome
Respect – Recognize the Value in Everyone
Enthusiasm – Find a Sense of Purpose in Work
