Issi Rozen
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
Chief Business Officer
Issi Rozen, chief business officer at the Broad Institute, is responsible for partnering with the life sciences industry and venture investors and developing innovative scientific and business collaborations. He is also responsible for initiating and establishing new ventures around novel research projects and for licensing the institute’s intellectual property portfolio.
Before joining the Broad Institute in 2011, Rozen headed corporate development at Resolvyx Pharmaceuticals, a venture-backed biotech startup, where he led the business development and partnering efforts. Prior to that, he led the business analysis group at EMD Serono, where he was responsible for evaluating in-licensing and M&A opportunities as well as commercial analytics and forecasting.
He is a co-founder of a number of Boston-based biotech startups and is an accomplished jazz guitarist. He earned his MBA at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.
Sven Bostyn
University of Liverpool, Law School
Senior Lecturer in Intellectual Property
Sven Bostyn is senior lecturer in IP law at the University of Liverpool, an assistant professor of IP law at the Institute for Information Law of the University of Amsterdam and visiting professor (chargé de cours invité) at the Université de Liège. He is also a regular guest professor at CEIPI in Strasbourg. He specialises in all areas of IP law, with special emphasis on patent law relating to pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, medical devices, software and AI (including machine learning and neural networks). He advises on SPC protection and data and market regulatory exclusivity, including paediatric extensions and orphan drug designations, and has advised national governments.
Ewan Nettleton
Novartis Pharma
Senior patent counsel
Ewan Nettleton is a senior patent counsel at Novartis Pharma AG in Switzerland where he works on global pharmaceutical litigation coordination projects. This involves managing IP and related litigation in a wide range of jurisdictions. Nettleton is a qualified UK solicitor (since September 2002), and has an MA in chemistry and a DPhil in protein chemistry from Balliol College, Oxford as well as a diploma in IP law and practice from Bristol University. He is a member of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Hazel Ford
Finnegan Europe LLP
Partner
Hazel Ford is a partner in Finnegan’s London Office. She specialises in the life sciences and pharmaceuticals fields and has substantial experience of drafting and prosecuting patent applications and coordinating patent strategy globally, including developing and reviewing strategies for filing and prosecuting patent applications worldwide; interactions between drafting, prosecution and opposition matters; and assessing how a patent portfolio can be strengthened in view of a client’s business goals.
Ford has prosecuted hundreds of patent applications at the EPO, particularly in the fields of biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, including antibodies, vaccines, genes and proteins, drug formulations, diagnostics, and new drug administration regimes.
Glyn Truscott
Elkington and Fife LLP
Partner
Glyn Truscott is a UK & European patent attorney. He is a partner at Elkington and Fife where his practice spans a wide range of biotechnology subject matter, with particular focus in recent years on antibodies and immunotherapies, stem cells, and the microbiome.
The majority of his work involves the drafting and prosecution of patent applications, and the handling of post-grant opposition proceedings before the European Patent Office. Truscott has handled numerous high-value EPO oppositions and appeals involving biologics, immuno-oncology and cellular therapies, in addition to coordinating corresponding litigations in the High Court of England & Wales and elsewhere in Europe.
He particularly enjoys advising on complex strategic matters, whether that be patent portfolio-building, SPC strategies, or opposition and revocation actions.
Christopher Wilkins
Dehns
Patent Attorney
Christopher Wilkins is a European and Chartered UK patent attorney. He joined Dehns in 2007 after completing an Honours degree in molecular biology and biochemistry from Durham University and a PhD and research fellowship in plant molecular biology at Cambridge University and became an associate in 2013. Working for multinational companies and SMEs, Wilkins’s work includes evaluating inventions for patentability, drafting patent specifications and all aspects of patent prosecution. He provides advice on infringement and validity, opposition of granted patents and assistance with the development and management of patent portfolios, covering a wide range of biotechnology, medical and cosmetic fields.
Claire Bennett
DLA Piper LLP
Partner
Ruth Hoy has great experience in media and intellectual property litigation, mainly acting for media and sporting clients. She has knowledge in contract, copyright, trademarks, passing off, confidential information, defamation and privacy. Her experience includes acting for an international sporting body to obtain the first ever interim injunction in Scotland to prevent internet streaming of live sports events and advising on anti-piracy litigation issues for the Premier League, including taking High Court proceedings to establish the legality of the importation and sale of foreign broadcaster smartcards in the UK and their use in pubs and clubs.
Douglas Drysdale
HGF Limited
Partner
Douglas Drysdale acts for a broad range of clients within the life sciences and chemical fields. His clients benefit from his candid, pragmatic and commercially-focused advice. He has extensive experience handling contentious IP matters for large and small clients, including high profile opposition and appeal proceedings at the European Patent Office, and he has a particularly strong reputation with small and medium-sized enterprises and universities.
Anita Varma
White & Case LLP
Partner
Anita Varma is an intellectual property partner based in White & Case’s Boston office, with a dual practice in London. She is qualified to practise before the US Patent and Trademark Office and the European Patent Office.
Varma provides strategic patent counselling to life sciences industry companies, guiding them through every stage of the patent life cycle. She works with clients in obtaining enforceable claims and supporting them in post-grant proceedings, as well as in developing and executing offensive and defensive patent strategies.
She also conducts strategic review of patent portfolios to identify strengths and weaknesses, and opportunities to minimise threats and maximise revenue.
Charles Larsen
White & Case
Intellectual Property Partner
Charles (Chuck) Larsen is an intellectual property partner based in White & Case’s Boston office, with a dual practice in London. He concentrates his practice on providing strategic patent advocacy and is licensed to practice before the US Patent and Trademark Office, the European Patent Office (EPO), US district courts, and the UK High Court.
Larsen’s patent practice includes advising on multijurisdictional disputes, conducting patent validity, infringement and freedom-to-operate studies, and IP due diligence for patents held in the US and Europe. He advises clients in inter partes review, European oppositions, litigation strategies and other post-grant proceedings.
He has served as counsel of record in nine Patent Trial and Appeal Board proceedings and reexaminations and in numerous EPO oppositions.
Will James
Marks & Clerk / Marks and Clerk
Partner
Will James acts for some of the largest global biotech companies as well as many leading tech companies. His expertise is patent disputes (including SPCs) in the biotech, pharmaceutical and electronics sectors advising on antibody engineering, DNA sequencing, reverse genetics and stem cell issues. James acted as counsel for the inventors in the only successful employee inventor compensation claim. Since then he has advised on compensation issues covering some of the most high profile inventions of all time. He also advises on commercial issues and is recognised in directories as a ‘Life Sciences Star’ and listed in MIP and Who’s Who Legal.
Steven Ward
Syngenta
Lead Patent Attorney
Steve Ward has managed the UK patent department of Syngenta for around 17 years. Syngenta is a global agrichemicals and seeds company headquartered in Switzerland and recently acquired by ChemChina. His department currently has eight patent attorneys and three trainees out of a Syngenta global total of 27 patent professionals. Syngenta patent attorneys have global responsibility for portfolios of R&D projects and commercial products worldwide. Ward has a chemistry degree from Oxford and briefly worked in polymer research before qualifying first as a UK and EP patent attorney and then as a trademark attorney with ICI.
Axel Ferrazzini
4iP Council EU
Managing Director
Axel Ferrazzini is a seasoned IP expert and innovator whose experience straddles technology research and development, business management and public policy development. He joined 4iP Council as managing director in September 2017 from BlackBerry where for a decade he had multiple responsibilities including the company’s standards IP policy strategy. He is a current member of the board of ETSI. Before joining BlackBerry, Ferrazzini worked for Orange. As manager of technological choices he built and managed a team of more than 30 standards experts and worked across the group’s divisions worldwide to create innovative services and develop IP.
Will Nieuwenhuys
Marks & Clerk / Marks and Clerk
Partner
Will Nieuwenhuys has experience in a variety of technical fields, with particular expertise in small molecule organic and pharmaceutical chemistry. His work encompasses all aspects of patent (and SPC) practice, including original drafting work, the prosecution of patent applications in the UK and before the European Patent Office (EPO), the management of worldwide patent portfolios, and the preparation of opinions and freedom to operate analyses. He also represents clients in opposition and appeal proceedings at the EPO on a regular basis.
Kevin Fournier
IBM United Kingdom Limited
Lawyer - Intellectual Property
Kevin Fournier is an IP counsel with IBM, and provides IP legal advice to the IBM business, mainly in the areas of contracts concerning technology services, joint development/collaboration, patent licensing, software licensing, and mergers & acquisitions. He also advises regarding invention disclosure reviews, patent application filing and prosecution, and patent assertions, sales and maintenance. Fournier provides extensive IP education sessions to IBM legal professionals and the IBM business, as well as speaking externally in various conferences in the IP area.
Sally Shorthose
Bird & Bird LLP
Partner
Sally Shorthose is one of Bird & Bird’s leading intellectual property (IP) partners. She provides a full range of IP commercial advice and support to her clients, including licensing, partnering and exploitation agreements, research, development and marketing collaborations. She also frequently advises clients on regulatory and ‘freedom to operate’ matters, and manages significant due diligence matters. As a transactional IP lawyer, she provides advice in relation to the protection and exploitation of a full range of IP rights, in standalone transactions and as part of an acquisition, divestment or investment activity.
Marianne Schaffner
Dentons
Partner
Marianne Schaffner is the national head of the IP Group of Dentons in Paris and a recognised trial lawyer in pan-European and international patent, trademark and trade secrets disputes in pharmaceutical, chemistry, agribusiness and electronics and telecommunications sectors. She advises clients on IP agreements, M&A, leveraged buyouts and capital market transactions. Schaffner has handled a range of litigation and strategic patent matters for a diverse array of companies, particularly in the life sciences and telecoms sectors. The majority of cases were pan-European, including before the European Patent Office and often with a US counterpart.
Andrew Brown
Aspire Pharma
Head of IP
Andrew Brown, EPA, RPA(UK), is the head of IP of Aspire Pharma, a UK-only focused pharma company. Having worked both for big pharma (GSK and AZ) and generic pharma (PLIVA, Teva and Pharmathen) companies as an in-house patent attorney for 20+ years he has a unique perspective of the commercial issues involved in both sectors. Brown has worked with EGA and BGMA on a number of initiatives.
Timo Minssen
University of Copenhagen
Professor of Biotechnology Law
Timo Minssen is professor of law at the University of Copenhagen’s (UCPH) Center for Information & Innovation Law (CIIR). He leads large interdisciplinary research projects examining legal issues in synthetic biology, precision medicine and large research infrastructures. He is scientific advisory board member of the Copenhagen Centre for Regulatory Sciences and steering committee member of the Danish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property. From January 2018 he will be the director of UCPH’s new Center and Collaborative Research Program for Advanced Studies in Biomedical Innovation Law, which is supported by the Novo Nordisk Foundation.
Catherine Coombes
HGF Limited
Patent Director
Cath Coombes is a commercially minded European and UK Chartered Patent Attorney with more than a decade of experience focusing on the life sciences field. She has particular interest in and considerable experience of securing and upholding patent protection relating to CRISPR technology, as applied to bacterial systems and, more recently, as a gene-editing tool.
The transformation of CRISPR systems from their natural function as part of adaptive bacterial immunity to a toolkit for carrying out site-specific modifications in eukaryotes has led to an explosion of new applications for such technology. Coombes provides a depth of knowledge from working in this highly contentious and constantly evolving field.
