Darren Franklin

Darren Franklin is an Associate General Counsel who advises Caltech and JPL in several legal and policy areas, with a focus on intellectual property, technology transfer, research, and compliance. Darren is an accomplished intellectual property attorney with more than twenty years of experience helping businesses protect their inventions in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, as well as litigating patent infringement claims in federal court. He has successfully handled all aspects of patent law, including litigation, infringement analyses, prosecution, licensing, and patent "inter partes review" proceedings. Darren also advises on trade secrets, trademarks, and copyrights.

Darren graduated with high distinction from the University of California, Berkeley, majoring in both physics and political science. He earned his Juris Doctor degree from Stanford Law School, where he served as an executive editor of the Stanford Law Review and as an editor of the Stanford Technology Law Review. Darren is also trained litigation mediator, having received a certificate of completion in Mediating the Litigated Case from the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution at the Pepperdine Caruso School of Law.

Before joining Caltech's Office of the General Counsel in 2025, Darren was a partner in the intellectual property group at a large law firm in downtown Los Angeles. Over the course of his career in private practice, Darren appeared in almost 100 federal court cases across the country and personally argued five patent cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. His practice further included representing clients in federal administrative proceedings related to patent infringement cases, such as adversarial "inter parties review" proceedings to invalidate patents before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Darren was named Lawyer of the Year for Intellectual Property Litigation in Los Angeles by Best Lawyers in 2023.

Darren is a member of the National Association of College and University Attorneys (NACUA), as well as the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA) and the Los Angeles County Bar Association (LACBA). He is a former president of the Los Angeles Intellectual Property Law Association (LAIPLA) and a former law clerk in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.