Louis Carbonneau is a seasoned intellectual property professional with over 20 years of a diversified and unique experience as an intellectual property litigator, a General Counsel of a software start up, a senior in house counsel, a senior manager of international legal teams and as an IT business development and licensing executive for a Fortune 50 company.

Louis recently retired from Microsoft Corporation after close to 15 years with the company's legal department to found THE POINT LAW GROUP.

His last role with the company included the general legal and IP support for its emerging markets and strategic silicone architecture groups. Between 2006 and 2008, Louis was 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 patent attorneys and legal professionals around the world who supported all research labs worldwide and all overseas incubation and product development groups, in addition to the Microsoft Health & Education Business 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, CBA, LES (Canada US) & AIPLA. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Washington’s Graduate Program in Intellectual Property and also serves as a Practicing Law Institute (PLI) faculty. He is a frequent guest speaker internationally on the subject of intellectual property, technology transfer, licensing and innovation and he himself holds a US and international patent around multimedia watermarking technology.