Carl Middlehurst. Source: https://conferences.law.stanford.edu/bestpractices2021/speakers/carl-middlehurst/
Salk Institute for Biological Studies
National ICT Australia. Photo: Enochlau, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NICTA_ATP_construction.jpg)
University of Sydney
Salk Institute for Biological Studies
National ICT Australia. Photo: Enochlau, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NICTA_ATP_construction.jpg)
Carl Middlehurst was born in Sydney, Australia, the capital of New South Wales and the country's most populous city. His academic and legal career was based in New South Wales, where he studied and was admitted to practise, before it extended to the United States and to technology and research organizations.
Carl Middlehurst studied at the University of Sydney, where he received a Bachelor of Science degree before pursuing a career in law.
Founded in 1850, the University of Sydney was the first university established in Australia. During the period of his studies, its science faculty provided a grounding in the natural sciences, a background that preceded his work as a research biochemist.
Before entering the legal profession, Carl Middlehurst worked as a research biochemist and published in a number of academic journals. He was admitted as a solicitor of the Supreme Court of New South Wales in 1988, and the State Bar of California later issued him a licence in November 1990.
He was a partner at Baker & McKenzie, a global law firm founded in Chicago in 1949, and worked with its offices in Sydney and San Diego. Before joining Sun Microsystems, he also served as licensing counsel at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, an independent nonprofit research organization founded in La Jolla, California, in 1960 by Jonas Salk, the developer of the polio vaccine.
From 2002 he was general counsel of Sun Microsystems Australia Pty Ltd, the Australian subsidiary of the computer company founded in California in 1982. Accounts of his Sun role describe both legal and business responsibilities, including trademark work, Asia-Pacific matters and management of an emerging market fund.
He later served as general counsel and company secretary of National ICT Australia, known as NICTA, which was established in 2002 as Australia's information and communications technology research centre of excellence. In that role he was responsible for commercialization and new ventures and also oversaw the human resources function. NICTA was later merged into CSIRO's Data61.
Alongside these roles, he was an adjunct professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, where he taught internet and privacy law, and he spoke at numerous conferences on internet, ecommerce and privacy law. He subsequently became general counsel and company secretary of Appen Limited, an Australian technology company, a position he held from 2019 until January 2026.
