IP Counsel, Copyright

Anthropic; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 320,000 - 385,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation

Equity donation matching (optional)

Generous vacation and parental leave

Flexible working hours

Office space

Job summary

Anthropic is seeking an experienced IP Counsel to lead copyright matters for frontier AI products. You will collaborate with research, product, and policy teams to address copyright questions in model outputs and training data, building practical frameworks for responsible AI development.

The role involves guiding internal teams, tracking developments, and shaping public positions while coordinating with external counsel and academia to advance Anthropic's copyright strategy.

Qualifications

• JD required with active bar admission in at least one U.S. state (California preferred).
• Expertise in U.S. copyright law and emerging tech.
• Ability to translate complex legal concepts for technical teams.
• Track record of cross‑functional collaboration in fast‑paced environments.

Responsibilities

• Serve as an internal expert resource on copyright law for research, product, litigation, and policy stakeholders.
• Advise in‑house legal teams on copyright issues across model and product development and litigation.
• Provide day‑to‑day copyright guidance to product, engineering, and safety teams on features, launches, and content policies.
• Monitor and translate US and international copyright developments to internal stakeholders.
• Collaborate on evolving and implementing Anthropic's global strategy on copyright issues.

Skills

Copyright law expertise

Cross‑functional collaboration

Communication skills

Policy engagement

Education

JD

Bar admission (California preferred)

Job description

About Anthropic

Anthropic’s mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. We want AI to be safe and beneficial for our users and for society as a whole. Our team is a quickly growing group of committed researchers, engineers, policy experts, and business leaders working together to build beneficial AI systems.

About the role

We are seeking an experienced IP Counsel to join our IP legal team with a focus on copyright. In this role, you will work cross-functionally with our AI product development and research teams and in‑house legal team members across product, research, and litigation to navigate emerging copyright challenges unique to frontier AI systems. You will tackle novel legal questions around model outputs, product features, and AI training data, and help establish copyright frameworks that will shape the future of AI development and deployment. You will also advance Anthropic's views on copyright and AI through external engagement, including policy papers and in‑person engagements.

Key responsibilities

• Serve as an internal expert resource on copyright law for research, product, litigation, and policy stakeholders
• Advise in‑house legal teams on a range of copyright issues across model and product development and litigation
• Provide day‑to‑day copyright guidance to product, engineering, and safety teams on features, launches, and content policies
• Monitor and translate US and international copyright developments to internal stakeholders
• Collaborate on evolving and implementing Anthropic's global strategy on copyright issues, including monitoring, researching, and advising on emerging developments
• Help shape public positions and create advocacy materials on copyright issues
• Collaborate with fellow IP counsel and other in‑house legal teams and outside counsel on litigation and monitor copyright developments involving other organizations
• Engage with academics, industry groups, and other stakeholders to develop norms and best practices around copyright and AI

Minimum qualifications

• JD and active membership in at least one U.S. state bar (California preferred)
• Expertise in U.S. copyright law and its application to emerging technologies, with working knowledge of international copyright frameworks
• A creative problem‑solving approach, with the ability to translate complex legal concepts for technical teams and develop practical solutions in uncharted legal territory
• A track record of thriving in fast‑paced environments, wearing multiple hats while balancing innovation with responsible risk management
• Exceptional communication skills with a track record of cross‑functional collaboration, particularly with technical and policy stakeholders

Preferred qualifications

• At least 10 years of relevant legal experience advising on copyright issues for technology companies or AI/ML products (in‑house experience preferred)
• Demonstrated experience advising in‑house teams on machine learning development lifecycles, AI products, and the unique copyright challenges they present
• A passion for AI's potential while maintaining a realistic assessment of its risks, with a commitment to building ethical and trustworthy systems

Role-specific policy: For this role, we expect staff to be able to work from our San Francisco, Seattle, Washington D.C., or New York office at least 3 days a week, though we encourage you to apply even if you might need some flexibility for an interim period of time.

The annual compensation range for this role is listed below.

For sales roles, the range provided is the role’s On Target Earnings ("OTE") range, meaning that the range includes both the sales commissions/sales bonuses target and annual base salary for the role.

Annual Salary: $320,000—$385,000 USD

Logistics

Minimum education: Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience

Required field of study:A field relevant to the role as demonstrated through coursework, training, or professional experience

Minimum years of experience: Years of experience required will correlate with the internal job level requirements for the position

Location-based hybrid policy: Currently, we expect all staff to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time. However, some roles may require more time in our offices.

Visa sponsorship:We do sponsor visas! However, we aren't able to successfully sponsor visas for every role and every candidate. But if we make you an offer, we will make every reasonable effort to get you a visa, and we retain an immigration lawyer to help with this.

How we're different

We believe that the highest‑impact AI research will be big science. At Anthropic we work as a single cohesive team on just a few large‑scale research efforts. And we value impact — advancing our long‑term goals of steerable, trustworthy AI — rather than work on smaller and more specific puzzles. We view AI research as an empirical science, which has as much in common with physics and biology as with traditional efforts in computer science. We're an extremely collaborative group, and we host frequent research discussions to ensure that we are pursuing the highest‑impact work at any given time. As such, we greatly value communication skills.

The easiest way to understand our research directions is to read our recent research. This research continues many of the directions our team worked on prior to Anthropic, including: GPT‑3, Circuit‑Based Interpretability, Multimodal Neurons, Scaling Laws, AI & Compute, Concrete Problems in AI Safety, and Learning from Human Preferences.

Come work with us!

Anthropic is a public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco. We offer competitive compensation and benefits, optional equity donation matching, generous vacation and parental leave, flexible working hours, and a lovely office space in which to collaborate with colleagues. Guidance on Candidates' AI Usage: Learn about our policy for using AI in our application process.