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Olivia serves on the Board of the Brownsboro Trail Alliance and is an active member of the firm’s Inclusivity & Belonging Committee. She also reaches out to engineering and law students at UofL to help them discover patent law as a career. A former dual-sport collegiate athlete and soccer team captain at Centre College, Olivia is happiest outside — hiking, kayaking, skiing, white water rafting, and exploring with her family. She is a passionate college football and women’s sports fan.
Olivia Alford is a patent attorney who understands what it means to be the engineer in the room — because she was one. Before joining Gray Ice Higdon as an Associate, she spent more than four years at GE Appliances as part of the Edison Engineering Development Program, working hands-on in embedded software, electromechanical systems, and technical project management. That experience doesn’t just inform her legal work. It transforms it.
Clients — whether they’re in-house counsel at large technology companies or individual inventors navigating the patent process for the first time — describe Olivia as someone who listens, understands, and follows through. She is known for meeting every deadline, thoroughly evaluating every strategic direction, and always delivering a plan that directly addresses her client’s specific concerns.
Olivia focuses her practice on patent prosecution, helping clients protect their innovations at every stage of the USPTO process:
Her dual background — engineering practitioner and patent attorney — means she can have the right conversation with anyone on a client’s team: the engineer who built the invention, the product manager who markets it, and the in-house counsel who manages the portfolio.
Client Perspective: “She listened to my concerns and feedback and implemented a plan that directly addressed them.”
Olivia clerked at Gray Ice Higdon during the summers of 2022 and 2023 — while simultaneously clerking at Middleton Reutlinger — before earning her J.D. cum laude from Notre Dame Law School in 2024. She was selected as a Google Legal Summer Institute (LSI) Scholar in 2023. She joined Gray Ice Higdon full-time as an Associate Patent Attorney in October 2024.
Kentucky Bar (2024)
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (2023)
J.D., cum laude, Notre Dame Law School (2024)
M.S., Electrical and Computer Engineering, cum laude, UofL Speed School
B.S., Computer Science, magna cum laude, Centre College
Olivia Alford is a patent attorney who understands what it means to be the engineer in the room — because she was one. Before joining Gray Ice Higdon as an Associate, she spent more than four years at GE Appliances as part of the Edison Engineering Development Program, working hands-on in embedded software, electromechanical systems, and technical project management. That experience doesn’t just inform her legal work. It transforms it.
Clients — whether they’re in-house counsel at large technology companies or individual inventors navigating the patent process for the first time — describe Olivia as someone who listens, understands, and follows through. She is known for meeting every deadline, thoroughly evaluating every strategic direction, and always delivering a plan that directly addresses her client’s specific concerns.
Olivia focuses her practice on patent prosecution, helping clients protect their innovations at every stage of the USPTO process:
Her dual background — engineering practitioner and patent attorney — means she can have the right conversation with anyone on a client’s team: the engineer who built the invention, the product manager who markets it, and the in-house counsel who manages the portfolio.
Client Perspective: “She listened to my concerns and feedback and implemented a plan that directly addressed them.”
Olivia clerked at Gray Ice Higdon during the summers of 2022 and 2023 — while simultaneously clerking at Middleton Reutlinger — before earning her J.D. cum laude from Notre Dame Law School in 2024. She was selected as a Google Legal Summer Institute (LSI) Scholar in 2023. She joined Gray Ice Higdon full-time as an Associate Patent Attorney in October 2024.
J.D., cum laude, Notre Dame Law School (2024)
M.S., Electrical and Computer Engineering, cum laude, UofL Speed School
B.S., Computer Science, magna cum laude, Centre College
Kentucky Bar (2024)
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (2023)
Olivia serves on the Board of the Brownsboro Trail Alliance and is an active member of the firm’s Inclusivity & Belonging Committee. She also reaches out to engineering and law students at UofL to help them discover patent law as a career. A former dual-sport collegiate athlete and soccer team captain at Centre College, Olivia is happiest outside — hiking, kayaking, skiing, white water rafting, and exploring with her family. She is a passionate college football and women’s sports fan.
