He worked as a patent attorney for Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati of Palo Alto, becoming a partner in 1992[citation needed] Following this, he worked as Vice President and assistant general counsel in charge of patents, litigation, licensing and antitrust/competition law for Intel, and later became one of four founders of Intellectual Ventures.
This is ironic because Intellectual Ventures has been described as a "patent troll", and Detkin helped popularize this as a pejorative term while at Intel.
[3] Detkin and Intellectual Ventures were prominently featured in an episode of This American Life on patent issues.
[4] He is an inactive member of the bars of California and New York, and licensed to represent inventors before the U.S. Patent Office.
He provided support for the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering to build a new principle teaching laboratory, The Detkin Lab.