Opportunity Snapshot

We invite you to take the reins of Polypore's IP strategy and put your mark on several exciting products that help make our world a better place.

We're Polypore, a leading global high-tech filtration company and if you have a Juris Doctor degree from a top institution for legal academia (an MBA in addition is a plus); active admission to practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office; and at least seven years progressive IP-related work experience, Chemical industry or related corporate patent experience, consider this your opportunity to make a very real and discernible impact on our business as you take ownership of our IP portfolio and initiatives and lead the way to more superior products, optimized operations, and higher returns for our investors.

Your Rewards

• Broad visibility -- interacting directly with senior management and nearly all departments within our family of companies will offer you rare and comprehensive insight into our business. With only a single layer residing between yourself and the CEO, it won't take much for your achievements in this role to percolate to the top.
• Ideal work environment -- you'll enjoy the best of both worlds here: a relatively lean organization and flat corporate structure where our collaborative leadership approach will encourage your involvement in high-level decision making, all within a well-founded and successful organization with the financial stability, policies, motivation and support to rapidly put your proposals into action.
• Stability -- you can rest assured that we're here for the long run. While other industries teeter on uncertainty, all of our business markets are growing, and all four of our divisions are expanding -- most by double digits.
• Ample room for growth -- in addition to a career path to General Counsel, our continued growth will open the door to various opportunities for expanding the scope of this role and the breadth of your experience.
• Excellent benefits -- along with a competitive salary and bonus incentive plan based on individual and company performance, you'll receive a generous benefits package that is more competitive than many of those offered by the larger Fortune 500 companies in this area.

Who We Are

Polypore is a leading worldwide developer, manufacturer and marketer of highly specialized polymer-based membranes used in separation and filtration processes. Our products and technologies target specialized applications and markets that require the removal or separation of various materials from liquids, with such materials ranging in size from microscopic to those visible to the human eye.

We manage our operations under two business segments: energy storage and separations media. The energy storage segment, which accounts for approximately two-thirds of our total sales, produces different types of membranes that function as separators in lead-acid batteries used in transportation and industrial applications and lithium batteries used in electronics applications. The separations media segment, which accounts for approximately one-third of our total sales, produces membranes used in various healthcare and industrial applications, including hemodialysis, blood oxygenation, ultrapure water filtration, degasification and other specialty applications.

We serve our customers globally with strategically located manufacturing facilities in the major geographic markets of North America, Europe and Asia. We have manufacturing facilities or sales offices in nine countries serving six continents. For additional information, please visit www.polypore.net.

More About Your Role

In order to be close the those directly involved in our IP activities (inventors, etc), you will work largely out of our Celgard (a Polypore division) facility and report to the General Counsel who is based in our nearby corporate headquarters. You'll leverage your previous experience to "hit the ground running" and pursue our immediate needs, further defining this position and your overall objectives as you go. These will include:

Tactical Management of our Global Intellectual Property Portfolio:

• Preparation and processing of new and existing patent applications
• Preparation and processing of new and existing trademark applications
• Coordination with outside counsel for filing of foreign patent applications
• Manage database for tracking existing patents and trademarks (either internally or by use of an outside service)

IP Related Contract Work:

• Drafting and maintenance of joint development agreements
• Confidential disclosure agreements
• License agreements
• IP-related general contract work
• IP-related due diligence of potential acquisitions

Strategic IP Management:

• IP audits
• Inventor training
• Monetizing underutilized IP assets
• Strategic review of existing IP portfolio and potential opportunities to expand our patent coverage

Keys to Success

Your top three high level goals for the first year will be to turn this into an efficient profit center by (1) reducing our legal cost constraints, (2) developing and managing a cohesive IP strategy, and (3) launching a thorough environmental scan that will help us better understand, plan and account for such factors as rising IP maintenance costs, global organizational growth, and the weakening dollar in an uncertain economy.

Expectations will be high, with the anticipation that you not only carry through on these objectives in year one, but also maintain the momentum in successive years and keep us on the path of constant innovation and optimization. To this end, your success in this role will require:

• Strategic innovation -- with your own brand of fearless creativity, you'll probe our current practices to both zero in on potential cost cutting measures that go beyond those we've already identified and find the means for recouping those to our best advantage.
• Flexibility and a self-starter approach -- with high energy and tremendous self-motivation, you'll help define our long-term objectives, while at the same time personally handling the needs of the day, such as patent drafting and maintenance, due diligence and contract management.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills -- we'll expect you to be outgoing, collaborative and in constant communication with our legal team, inventors, and others throughout the organization.

If this sounds like the right mix of challenge and opportunity, and you meet the required qualifications, we look forward to hearing from you.