Intellectual property (IP) may adopt many forms - patents, trademarks, goodwill, designs, copyright and know-how. But what all of these forms have in common is that they provide key IP assets potentially with substantial commercial and innovation potential. Knowing how to leverage these IP assets requires a balanced blend of IP awareness, commercial understanding and familiarity with IP portfolio management.

 

Committed to supporting UK industry, IfM’s Centre for Technology Management (CTM) and Avidity IP launched the Strategic Intellectual Property Forum (SIPF) to help companies understand how to manage and exploit their IP.

 

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Agenda

 

13:00 - Registration and refreshments
13:30 - Welcome 
Professor Tim Minshall, Head of IfM, Dr Frank Tietze, Centre for Technology Management, IfM & Joeeta Murphy, AvidityIP

14:00 - Changing IP culture at an international engineering conglomerate 
Stephan Wolke, Head of IP, ThyssenKrupp
14:30 - Open Innovation: innovative IP approaches to enable collaborative research
Sally Curran, Senior Patent Director, AstraZeneca

15:00 - Refreshments 
15:30 - Keeping the edge in competitive sailing : America's Cup and the cult of secrecy

Simon Watin, Design Coordinator, Artemis Racing
16:00 - Racetrack to Road and Beyond

Christian Bedford, Director, Williams Technology Ventures Limited

 

16:30 - Panel discussion
Sally Curran, Simon Watin, Christian Bedford and Donal O'Connell

17:00 - Close - followed by Networking and refreshments

 

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Speakers include 

 

 

Stephan Wolke, Head of IP, ThyssenKrupp

Dr Stephan Wolke studied physics, philosophy and macroeconomics at Bonn University and graduated with a Doctorate in physics. He spent the first five years of his professional career at McKinsey & Company. After founding (and having sold) two own businesses Stephan served in several functions at Bayer AG as well as Danaher Corp. He joined ThyssenKrupp in 2011 and is on corporate level responsible for Intellectual Property & Services (Head of Corporate Intellectual Property at ThyssenKrupp) as a well as head of management board of ThyssenKrupp Intellectual Property GmbH. 

 

Sally Curran, AstraZeneca 

Sally is Senior Patent Director for the Respiratory, Inflammation & Autoimmune (RIA) therapy area at AstraZeneca.  Sally joined AstraZeneca in 2010 after more than a decade in private practice IP firms handling drafting, prosecution and defense of IP in the pharmaceutical industry.  In private practice Sally's global client base ranged from large pharma to universities, spin-outs and start-ups. In her current role Sally is accountable for defining and implementing the IP strategy for all of AstraZeneca's pipeline and on-market products in the RIA area for both small molecules and biologics.  Sally leads a team of attorneys with experience of all stages of the patenting process, from drafting and prosecution of key composition of matter filings, through life cycle management strategies and patent term extensions, to loss of exclusivity projections and contentious proceedings.  In addition to her work with RIA, Sally was also instrumental in the Legal and Intellectual Property framework used when designing AstraZeneca’s Open Innovation portal (openinnovation.astrazeneca.com).  Sally holds an MA in Natural Sciences from Christ's College, Cambridge, as well as being a qualified European and UK Patent Attorney.

 

Donal O’Connell, Managing Director, Chawton Innovation Services 

Donal is the Managing Director of Chawton Innovation Services, which offers consultancy in the areas of innovation and intellectual property management with a client base including Multi-Nationals, SMEs, Legal & IP Firms, Financial Services entities as well as Universities as well as a suite of intellectual property software solutions for SMEs, Law Firms & IP Firms. Donal graduated from NIHE Limerick (now The University of Limerick) in Ireland in 1985 with a Degree in Electronic Engineering. He was formerly a VP of R&D and a Director of IP at Nokia. He had a long career at Nokia for 21 years with wide and varied experience in the wireless telecoms industry, having worked for periods in The Netherlands, UK, USA, Finland, and HK.
He is an Adjunct Professor at Imperial College Business School in London, and teaches about 'IP management'. He has written two books and a large number of papers on various aspects of innovation and IP and since 2013, has been included into the IAM 300 (the world's leading IP Strategists) an annual listing of those individuals identified as offering operating companies and other IP owners world-class advice on maximising the value of their
intellectual property.

 

Frank Tietze, Centre for Technology Management, IfM 

At the Institute for Manufacturing Frank leads the IIPM (Innovation and IP Management) research group at the Centre for Technology Management, University of Cambridge. We take a managerial (firm level) and relational perspective on all things IP (Intellectual Property) within distributed and collaborative (open) innovation processes for emerging (manufacturing) technologies. The group focuses on “how to”-questions thereby enabling practice relevant research, while ensuring academic rigour.  

 

 

Joeeta Murphy, AvidityIP    

Joeeta is a Senior Managing Attorney at Avidity IP, a commercially focused firm of Patent Attorneys, and manages the Life Sciences, Pharma and MedTech team in Cambridge and Oxford.  Joeeta has over 23 years experience in the Patent and Trade Mark profession having worked in top tier private practice and as an in-house Attorney in a bio-pharmaceutical company.  Joeeta is widely experienced in drafting, prosecution, EPO oppositions and Appeals in a variety of Life Sciences technologies and has represented clients from SMEs to multinationals and start-ups to Universities. Joeeta’s experience includes handling contracts, licenses, IP Due diligence for M&As, IP Audits, freedom to operate searches and opinions, infringement and validity opinions, competitor reviews and landscaping as well as providing IP training.

                                                                    

 

Simon Watin, Design Coordinator, Artemis Racing 

Simon Watin is design coordinator for Artemis Racing since 2016. With a background in applied mathematics and naval architecture, Simon joined Artemis in 2014 as a lead engineer for yacht performance prediction and simulation. He now leads a team of engineers within to develop the next generation of computational tools for cutting edge racing yacht design as a part of Artemis Racing's challenge to the next America's cup.

 

 

Christian Bedford, Director, Williams Technology Ventures Limited

Christian first started working for Williams in 2012 as the Group’s Senior Legal Counsel and held prime responsibility for the Group’s IP. Prior to that, he was a solicitor in the IP department of Allen & Overy.

 

Christian is now Director of Williams Technology Ventures, where he leads on the incubation and development of new technologies into commercial applications, including Williams' own ground up innovations and the technologies of its collaboration partners.

 

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Who should attend 

SIPF caters for decision makers in large, mid-caps but also small companies and high-tech start-ups such as CTOs, portfolio managers, VPs Technology, Heads of IP / licensing from the Cambridge cluster and beyond.

 

Attendance is free of charge, but pre-event registration is required. Come along and engage in an expert community for discussions on strategic IP topics. 

 

The CTM and Avidity IP are looking forward to welcoming you to the IfM.

 

 

The event is kindly supported by: