Patent Attorney

About the Role

As our Patent Attorney, you will be at the heart of our innovation strategy, transforming cutting-edge research into a robust and strategic intellectual property portfolio. You will work closely with our world-class research, engineering, and product teams to protect groundbreaking inventions, shape the future of open-source AI, and support the company’s global growth.

Responsibilities

• Proactively engage with researchers, engineers, and product managers to identify and prioritize patentable inventions.
• Advise on what to retain as a trade secret and what to file as a patent application.
• Draft invention memos, translating complex technical ideas into clear, defensible disclosures.
• Prepare independent claims and manage outside counsel in the drafting and global prosecution of patent applications.
• Supervise office action responses and ensure consistent, high-quality filings.
• Administer and evolve internal inventor incentives, including bonuses, awards, and visibility initiatives.
• Support IP due diligence in M&A and strategic investment transactions, including assessment of the IP portfolio, freedom-to-operate risks, and competitive positioning of targets.
• Develop and maintain internal documentation, workflows, and inventor education on the patent process.
• Build dashboards to track filings, deadlines, and portfolio metrics; recommend and manage internal IP tools, databases, and docketing systems.
• Contribute to the development of a global IP strategy aligned with corporate goals, and track/manage IP budget and outside counsel performance.
• Align patent strategy with Mistral’s open source objectives; evaluate and recommend participation in patent pools, defensive patent networks, or other industry alliances.
• Partner with other legal team members, product, engineering, and research teams to embed IP thinking in the development lifecycle and broader company strategy.

Requirements

• Proven experience drafting patents in complex software/AI domains.
• Deep understanding of AI patent eligibility (US & Europe).
• Experience selecting, managing, and optimizing external patent firms.
• Ability to engage with researchers/engineers and extract critical information, and talent for explaining IP concepts to non-legal audiences.
• Hands-on experience with LLMs (e.g., building agents, technical projects) and ability to decode and articulate complex technical concepts (model architectures, training methods).
• Self-driven to anticipate needs, engage stakeholders, and document processes.
• Fluent English for legal and technical writing.

Nice-to-Haves

• Experience in licensing or litigation for assessing patent quality.
• Coding skills (Python, etc.).
• Business acumen: Understanding of how patents drive value for a scale-up.
• Familiarity with open-source licenses and their intersection with patents.
• Experience assessing IP in tech transactions (M&A IP due diligence).
• Proficiency in French for day-to-day collaboration.