About Black Pine IP

The people you'll work with.

Black Pine IP is a small firm by intent — no account teams, no handoffs. This is who leads the work, and where the practice comes from.

The Lineage

Black Pine IP grew out of Austin Patent Expertise.

In 2019, Monty Austin finished a forty-year career at IBM and founded Austin Patent Expertise — his own name on the door, APE to its friends — to help companies across the country and beyond realize their patent strategies. He built the practice the way he had built his career: on deep transaction experience, straight dealing, and work finished properly. Its reputation traveled the way reputations should — from one satisfied client to the next.

As the work expanded from patents to full portfolio strategy and dealmaking, the firm took a name equal to the philosophy that had always driven it: the Japanese black pine, the bonsai master's tree, shaped over years toward a vision.

The name changed. The standard it was built on didn't.

The People

Two careers in the patent business. One standard for the work.

The people you meet on day one are the people at the table on the last day, when the work is done.

Founder and Senior Advisor

Monty Austin

Monty finished a forty-year career at IBM in 2019. Seventeen of those years were spent in IBM's patent organization, where he began as a patent engineer building claim charts and ultimately led the worldwide team responsible for realizing value from IBM's patent portfolio. Filing, maintenance, licensing, divestiture, and the contract terms that make or break a deal: he has worked every part of the patent business, from the technical detail up.

He founded Austin Patent Expertise to put that experience within reach of companies that don't have an IBM-sized patent operation — and then spent years doing exactly that, deal by deal. At Black Pine, Monty works with clients on transactions — often the first voice you'll hear, and the one at your side when a deal is on the table. He has usually seen the situation before.

Managing Director

Jared Engstrom

Jared has spent more than twenty years in the patent business, most of it in the seat our clients sit in. He began in private practice as a patent attorney, went in-house as patent counsel at Hewlett-Packard, spent nearly nine years at Red Hat — where he came to lead the patent team — and guided IP strategy at CrowdStrike. He knows what it means to be the person a company trusts to make its portfolio serve the business, because that has been his job.

Years on the hiring side of engagements like ours shaped a simple conviction about how they should be run: quietly, precisely, and through to the finish. At Black Pine, Jared works across both sides of the practice — shaping portfolio strategy with IP leaders, and carrying transactions through alongside Monty. He is also the steward of what Monty started: the same practice, carried forward.

How We Run the Firm

Small by design.

Specialist work doesn't improve with headcount. It improves with judgment. Every Black Pine engagement is led start to finish by the people on this page — the strategy, the negotiation, the finish. When a matter calls for more hands, we bring in people we trust, and the work stays under the same eyes.

That is also how the work stays discreet. High-stakes IP work is sensitive, and quiet competence is part of the service.

When something important has to be done exceptionally well.

Start a conversation

Or write directly: hello@blackpineip.com