How One Associate IP Counsel Achieved a Moonshot Dream

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Mercedes Hobson is intellectual property counsel for Google’s X Division, a coveted company within a coveted company. Hobson’s work entails handling IP duties for breakthrough technologies and business ideas that are so cutting edge that Google created an entire “moonshot factory” to nurture the ideas of tomorrow.

The team behind X has brought Google Brain, Verily, Intrinsic, Waymo, and Wing to fruition, and there is little doubt that any patent attorney anywhere working for any company would trade places with Hobson in an instant. That’s today.

Hobson didn’t grow up in a family of lawyers. She didn’t attend a prestigious private school. She wasn’t a shoo-in for the university of her choice because of the prestige of her family’s name. And while interviewing at IBM for her first real legal role, she was having a hard time explaining why she deserved an IP job when she had no real IP experience. In short, the interview wasn’t going well.

“It just kept coming back to the same question of ‘We’re just not seeing experience here that lets us know you would be a good fit for this job,’” Hobson remembers. “I had always been self-taught when it came to technology. It was something I was passionate about as a kid. And, frankly, I had sent out hundreds of résumés and cover letters to any place that even might have an IP department trying to get any experience that I could.”

When Hobson handed her interviewer a reference sheet as she got up to leave, the interviewer asked her if she had waited to play her “ace in the hole” until the last possible moment. Hobson was confused. The first name on her reference sheet was Pamela Krupka, an accomplished IP attorney who had contacted Hobson after seeing the college-aged Hobson interviewed on television during the inaugural Jackie Robinson Day celebration at Dodger Stadium. Hobson was asked during the interview what she wanted to be, and she had replied, “a patent attorney.”

“I had always been self-taught when it came to technology. It was something I was passionate about as a kid.”

Mercedes Hobson

It just so happened that Hobson’s interviewer knew Krupka and knew that anyone who had studied under her would be able to handle the job. IBM would be Hobson’s launchpad into IP, and the full-circle moment never ceases to amaze her.

But why did an accomplished IP attorney like Krupka want to mentor Hobson in the first place? Since the age of seven, Hobson had grown up in the foster care system. Hobson’s mother, who was only thirteen when she gave birth, was unable to care for her daughter but remained in her life. But even at such a young age, her mother had incredible advice for her daughter.

“She always advised me that I could do anything in the world, but she just wanted me to make new mistakes,” Hobson says with a laugh. “She didn’t want me to make the same mistakes she had, and she wanted a better life for me.”

Hobson says her story is full of loving people who chose to embrace her. There was the teacher who saw a young Hobson carrying her notebooks in a plastic sack and got her a new backpack full of materials. There was the school advisor who pushed her to apply to UCLA. There is a reason Hobson belongs at X, and not just because Google was always the company she had her heart set on.

Hobson belongs at X because she’s not only a passionate and accomplished IP attorney, but she keeps finding new ways to grow. After taking stock of the lack of diversity in her industry—she quotes the embarrassing statistic that there are more patent attorneys and agents in the US named Michael than there are racially diverse women—Hobson became more involved in Google’s Black Diaspora ERG. Eventually, she stepped up to colead it.

To build more community, Hobson, whose meals are so legendary that she’s opened her own catering business, hosted a cross-cultural food celebration. The event brought ERGs together to celebrate culture and provide those who may have felt they had to split their identities to multiple ERGS a place to feel at home. The Culinary Crossroads celebration was a massive hit, and it’s now become a tradition.

Hobson is actively working to welcome new voices into IP. She says attending the Afro Tech annual conference was one of the most impactful moments of her career, and she can only imagine the kind of inspiration it would have provided her at a younger age.

Hobson’s story is a celebration of so much. Her story can be so much to so many people. She wants anyone who has ever been in the foster system to know that it can be your superpower. Find your mentors. Connect with your community. And keep trying. You, too, could be an IP attorney by day, chef by night, and an inspiration for all.

---