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.

Bill LaFontaine
International Business Machines Corporation
General Manager - Intellectual Property
Dr William R. LaFontaine Jr is a recognised leader in the areas of technology licensing, technology partnerships and IP. As general manager of IP at IBM, LaFontaine and his team work at the intersection of research, business units and clients to accelerate market introduction of new technologies including cognitive computing. He is responsible for delivering over a billion dollars in joint development, technology transfer and patent licensing annually. In his 28 years at IBM, LaFontaine has been the COO for IBM’s Research division, general manager of Global Technology Services in Middle East and Africa and GM of worldwide semiconductor and technology sales.

Adrian Howes
Nokia
Head of IP and Standards, IP Regulatory Affairs
Adrian Howes is head of IP and standards in Nokia’s IP regulatory affairs team. He has worked as a senior litigation counsel at Mylan, a legal consultant for Sony Computer Entertainment and an associate in the IP department of Bird & Bird. He is an English qualified lawyer. Howes’s work at Nokia encompasses policy and regulation on issues relating to IP rights, including involvement in cross-industry discussions on IP. Howes regularly attends IP rights meetings at the ITU, ETSI and NGMN and is involved in industry discussions on the interaction between standards and open source.

Alvin Lam
Maucher Jenkins
Patent Attorney, Partner
Alvin Lam is a partner in the patent group of Maucher Jenkins’ London office. He graduated in 2001 with a joint degree in artificial intelligence (AI) and computer science from the University of Edinburgh, and entered the patent profession amid the developing landscape of patenting computer and software-related inventions in the UK and Europe. His practice specialisation has remained in advising and obtaining patents for high-tech clients in the AI and computing fields. Lam has extensive experience with drafting and prosecuting patent applications, global patent portfolio management and filing strategy advice, prior art and freedom to operate searching and advisory work.

Simon MacLennan
(formerly) TiVo Corporation
Vice President, IP Strategy, EMEA
Simon MacLennan is an IP strategy executive with TiVo, a provider of innovativesolutions for television content discovery. TiVo has innovated leading guidance, DVR and voice discovery solutions, which it monetises through product supplies and IP licensing. He was a member of TiVo’s Leadership Council. Prior to joining TiVo, MacLennan worked for Sky plc as Group Head of IP. He was responsible for Sky’s IP group and managed a wide range of issues, with particular focuses on brand and technology related IP. He is a UK and European qualified Intellectual Property lawyer.

Lyle Ellis
Vodafone Group Services Ltd
Senior IPR Manager, Commercial Operations & Intellectual Property
Lyle Ellis is a UK and European patent attorney, and heads the Vodafone patent team at Group level. He has a wide range of responsibilities including internal and external patent strategy development; patent portfolio management; patent value realisation; patent and IP training across the Group; expert IP advisor to legal and commercial teams; third party patent threat management; and open source software strategy support. Lyle also leads the Vodafone global legal ‘digital think tank’ group, which investigates how technology and new ways of working can, and may, impact the in-house legal profession.

Patrick Courtney
SiLA Standards
Director
Patrick Courtney MBA has 20 years’ industrial experience in the development of technology R&D and marketing for scientific instruments, as a director at PerkinElmer, and at Sartorius and Cap Gemini. He leads the European working group on laboratory robotics with the European Commission’s AI/Robotics Programme. He is member of the board of directors of SiLA (Standards in Laboratory Automation) and sits on the advisory board of the projects AdaLab and ROAR. He holds a PhD in molecular biology/engineering, has carried out research in AI and computer vision, and is named as inventor on 10 patents.

Angela King
Johnson Matthey PLC
Patent Attorney
Angela King manages the IP needs of three different business units across the FTSE 100 chemical company Johnson Matthey, managing global patent and trademark prosecution alongside identifying and protecting trade secrets. She also handles more contentious matters such as oppositions before the European Patent Office and providing freedom to operate advice. She takes an active role in developing IP protection strategy for the business units in her care. They range from long established mature technologies to research and development in emerging new markets, and have associated differing needs.

Anna Maria Lagerqvist Gahm
Volvo Car Corporation
Senior IP Counsel / Deputy Chief IP Counsel
Anna Maria Lagerqvist Gahm is part of a team with global corporate responsibility for all IP related matters within Volvo Cars, working closely with R&D, strategic product planning, marketing, purchasing, and the legal department. She is head of IP litigation and member of a cross-functional core business team coordinating all alliances within Volvo Cars and building up and negotiating cooperation agreements with external partners. She has 15-plus years of experience in IP, contracting and licensing and is a speaker in international IP forums and a lecturer at university level.

Jaime Siegel
Open Invention Network
Global Licensing Director
Jaime Siegel is the CEO of Cerebral Assets, a global consulting firm that advises on IP and digital strategies. Siegel acts as the global director of licensing for the Open Invention Network (OIN, the world’s largest patent non-aggression community, creating a collaborative space to promote innovation in Linux. Before Cerebral Assets, he was EVP in charge of licensing for Acacia Research Group; he spent almost 16 years at Sony Corporation of America as VP and senior IP counsel, where he was responsible for global patent litigation for Sony family companies and out-licensing programmes.

Sonia Cooper
Microsoft - Skype
Senior Patent Attorney, IP Policy and Strategy
Sonia Cooper is a senior patent attorney in the IP policy and strategy Group at Microsoft and handles IP policy matters for Microsoft, with a focus on Europe. Cooper is also responsible for patent portfolio development for Microsoft Research in the UK, Israel and Egypt. Prior to Microsoft, Cooper was head of patents at Skype. Before joining Skype, she worked as a patent attorney in private practice in London, having obtained a Batchelor's degree in Physics from Bristol University in 1997 and a Master's degree in Management of Intellectual Property from QMW University in London in 2000.

Sharaz Gill
skepsis telecom
Managing Director
Sharaz graduated from the University of Essex in 1988 with a first-class honours degree in Electronic Engineering, winning the Hewlett-Packard Research Labs Scholarship. He started his professional career as a research-engineer at Hewlett-Packard’s European Research Labs in the UK. After two
years of further post-graduate engineering studies in France (ESIEE) and Germany (University of Karlsruhe), Sharaz joined the European Patent Office in The Hague, as tri-lingual patent-examiner in the field of computer communications.
Until recently, Sharaz spent five years as head of HTC’s patent litigation and licensing functions for the EMEA region. In this role, he supervised HTC’s European patent litigation, defending HTC against patent infringement actions across the European Union against companies such as IPCom,
Apple and Nokia. As head of licensing, Sharaz negotiated HTC’s essential and non-essential patent licences with all of the major telecoms patent owners, and therefore has a deep understanding of the global patent licensing space.

Mathew Heim
4iP Counsel Europe, Qualcomm
Board Member, Vice President
Mathew Heim’s work focuses principally on European IP rights, standardisation and antitrust policy matters. He also advises on international regulatory matters. He is a board member of 4iP Council Europe, a research council in the field of IP rights. Heim spent over a decade advising on European political, regulatory and legal challenges in sectors such as telecommunications, online advertising, raw materials and bananas. He is active in a number of competition associations. He was awarded degrees from Bristol and Exeter universities before being called to the Bar of England and Wales.

Amir Askarian
Stratus Law Group
Patent Attorney
Amir Askarian PhD is a US patent attorney. He represents high-tech companies in all stages of patent protection including patent preparation and prosecution, portfolio strategy and management, and post-grant proceedings. He has represented a wide range of clients from early stage startups to large multinational corporations. He is very keen on the legal and technological aspects of patent matters in a wide range of electrical and computer technologies. He also has vast experience in preparing and prosecuting software-related patent applications including artificial intelligence.

Sam Granata
Antwerp Court of Appeal (Belgium)
Judge
Sam is a Judge at the Court of Appeal Antwerp, Belgium, and an external member of the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office, as well as a member of the Legal Framework Group Unified Patent Court (Subgroup 1: Rules of Procedures of the Court and Subgroup 6: Rules on Mediation and Arbitration), Member of the “Conseil Benelux de la Propriété Intellectuelle” and member of the Belgian Board for Intellectual Property Rights in the industrial property section.

Dafydd Bevan
Marks & Clerk Solicitors
Partner
Dafydd Bevan is an IP lawyer who advises clients on the enforcement and commercialisation of IP. On the patent side, he has particular experience of advising clients on the litigation and licensing of TMT, electronics, software and mechanical patents. He has a broad range of experience, from broadcasting technology, network communications and internet applications to oil and gas machinery such as tong-positioning devices, wellbore technology and shale shakers. Bevan also has considerable experience in advising on the interaction of UK litigation and opposition proceedings at the EPO, working on oppositions with parallel UK proceedings.

Wjensen Jensen
No Account Provided
Managing Associate
Will Jensen is an IP lawyer with a particular focus on complex patent litigation and strategy in the telecommunications, electronics and life sciences areas. He has recent experience with mobile phones and networks including internet, web and wifi technologies; software; biotechnology and vaccines; and mechanical engineering. He has significant experience in media and telecommunications matters involving competition, FRAND and SEPs. Jensen has spent much of his career working on matters involving non-practising entities. The majority of his cases are before the UK High Court but involve harmonisation with parallel multinational proceedings, including in the EPO.

Julia Gwilt
Appleyard Lees IP LLP
partner
Julia Gwilt is a partner in the electronics and software team and is based in Appleyard Lees’ Cambridge office. Gwilt studied mathematics at the University of Cambridge, then computer science at École Centrale Paris. This background is a natural fit to her work on software-implemented inventions and provides a springboard for other technological sectors. She has experience of advising on protecting inventions in the fintech and bioinformatics field, including inventions using neural networks and other modelling techniques. She has delivered personalised training to clients to understand how software inventions can be protected in key markets.

Howard Read
Appleyard Lees IP LLP
Senior Associate
Howard Read is a patent attorney in Appleyard Lees’ electronics and software team. He specialises in drafting and prosecuting computer-implemented inventions. In addition to an MSc in computing, Read has a BA (Hons) and a MA in natural sciences, as well as a PhD in metallurgy from the University of Cambridge. He has extensive computing experience in academia and industry, with applications encompassing atomic structures, bioinformatics for proteomics, metabolomics and more. He understands the patenting and commercial challenges faced in this field and partners with clients to realise the full potential of their IP.