Louis Carbonneau

Louis is a seasoned intellectual property attorney with over 20 years of a diversified and unique US and international experience as an intellectual property litigator, a General Counsel of a software start up, a senior in house counsel and General Manager, IP & Licensing at Microsoft Corporation and a Professor at the University of Washington’s Graduate Program in Intellectual Property Law & Policy.

Louis is bilingual (English/French) and licensed to practice in the US and in Canada since 1988.

Louis recently retired from Microsoft after close to 15 years with the company's legal department to found THE POINT LAW GROUP, a boutique law firm dedicated to technology and e-commerce companies.

Over his career at Microsoft, Louis was the lead business and intellectual property counsel to various business units, including, Windows Networking, Automotive, Smart Cards, Smart Personal Objects, Health, Education, Emerging Markets and Strategic Silicone Architecture. He also served in a senior operating role as the GM, Outbound Licensing & IP Ventures, where he was primarily responsible for the outbound licensing activities of Microsoft's unproductized technologies and intellectual property. During that period, he was a frequent spokesperson on Microsoft's commercial licensing programs and structured and negotiated numerous related transactions. From 2003 to 2006, Louis was the General Manager, Microsoft International IP & Licensing, a group he created and where he assembled and managed an international team of attorneys and legal professionals around the world who supported all Microsoft Research labs worldwide and all overseas incubation and product development groups.

Louis initially joined Microsoft in 1995 as General Counsel of then wholly owned subsidiary Softimage Inc., a computer graphics software development company based in Montreal (Quebec), which he helped divest for close to 300M. Before joining Microsoft, he was a member of Smart & Biggar, the largest IP boutique law firm in Canada, where he handled major IP litigations, as well as worked on various IP matters & transactions.

Louis is admitted to practice with both the Washington State and Quebec (Canada) Bars. He is a member of the WSBA, ABA, LES (Canada US) & AIPLA. He is a technical advisor to an early stage fund management firm in Canada and a consultant to the Executive Forum. In addition, Louis serves as a Practicing Law Institute (PLI) faculty and he is a frequent guest speaker internationally on the subject of intellectual property, technology transfer, licensing and innovation. He himself holds a US and international patent around multimedia watermarking technology.