Programme

Please note that the time zone for the programme is CEST.

Moderation: Marco Bravo, EPO

Speakers

Telmo Vilela
European Patent Office

Telmo Vilela has a degree in law from the Law School of the University of Minho, Portugal, and holds postgraduate qualifications in IP and Competition Law, Law and Genetics, and Pharmaceutical Law. In 2013 he joined the European Patent Office and in 2015 he was appointed Adviser to the President for Legal, International and Quality Affairs. He has been Principal Director Cooperation and Patent Academy since July 2019, overseeing all the EPO's co-operation and external training activities.

Jean-David Malo
European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA), established by the European Commission

As Director for Open Innovation and Open Science in 2017, he designed and expanded initiatives such as the Venture EU Initiative and the ROI dimension under the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI). In 2019, following the European Council's request to set up the European Innovation Council (EIC), he became Director of the EIC Task Force. Since April 2021 he has been the Director of the EISMEA.

Michael Fröhlich
European Patent Office

Michael Fröhlich is the Director of European and International Legal Affairs, PCT at the EPO. He is a fully qualified German lawyer with a post-graduate degree and Ph.D. in IP. Serving in increasingly responsible positions in the IP area, he is overseeing a team of lawyers and paralegals supporting key policy projects of the EPO, including the implementation of the Unitary Patent. Previous experience includes: Senior Director, EU IP & Strategy at BlackBerry, Senior Legal Counsel at Nokia, heading the Legal Affairs department at the ETSI, Chairman of the AIPPI Committee on Patents & Standard, Vice-Chairman of the GSMA IPR Working Group and Vice-Chairman of the LES Publication Committee

Yann Ménière
European Patent Office

Yann Ménière joined the EPO as Chief Economist in 2016. He has many years of in-depth experience providing economic insights into issues relating to patents, innovation and economic growth, and regularly contributes high-level expertise and analysis to public and expert forums. Yann led the Chair on "IP and Markets for Technology" at MINES ParisTech, where he was professor of economics. He also lectured on the economics of IP at Imperial College London, the Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium) and CEIPI. His research and expertise relate to the economics of innovation, competition and intellectual property.

Pierre-Louis Blerot
CTIE - Government IT Center of Luxembourg

An IT programme manager and delivery leader with around 17 years' experience in the banking and public sectors, Pierre-Louis Blerot has been working on implementing IT solutions for the UPC as its Head of IT since 2020. Drawing on his proven experience in dealing mainly with regulatory topics in the areas of finance and risk, he enjoys finding pragmatic ways to deliver transversal solutions for the organisation (including cross-border projects). To deliver on promises, he has set up an efficient means of coordinating different tasks and addresses a number of challenges at various hierarchical levels. He has a master's degree in computer science and a post-master's certificate in management.

Yolanda Sánchez García
European Patent Office

Yolanda Sánchez García joined the EPO in Vienna in 2002. She is the Product Marketing Manager for the European Patent Register, responsible for promoting its application, providing training and conducting market research. She is also actively involved in planning and developing new Register services and features, including the Federated Register, Register Alert and the Unitary Patent Register, guided by the results of user consultations. Yolanda holds a PhD in organic chemistry (Universidad de Barcelona and Molecular Research Institute, Palo Alto, California), a post-doctoral degree (Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Munich) and a postgraduate degree in marketing.

Vesna Vajsbaher
European Patent Office

Vesna Vajsbaher joined the EPO in 2006 as a member of the Asian patent information team . In 2009, she joined the Patent Data team and is currently the main business support contact for Open Patent Services (OPS) web services. As a patent information data specialist, she helps internal and external users find the best bulk data product or service solution for their specific needs. She is also involved in patent information data queries and issues relating to the external tools and services that EPO Patent Knowledge offers to the public.

Nuria Nine
European Patent Office

Nuria Nine joined the EPO in 2002, where she worked in the former Directorate Cooperation Programmes and INPADOC. She moved later to the Publications department where she deals with EPO online services such as the European Patent Register and EP Bulletin search. Since 2019 she has been a member, on a part-time basis, of the Vienna PATLIB team. Nuria has a degree in English linguistics and literature.

Ignacio Muñoz Ozores
European Patent Office

Ignacio Muñoz Ozores previously worked at the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office (OEPM) as Head of Documentation Service, representing Spain as a patent information expert at WIPO SCIT meetings and in Latin America for the promotion of patent information. In 2005, he joined the EPO in Vienna as Publications Manager, overseeing several patent information products such as ESPACE-BULLETIN and ESPACE-LEGAL. In 2007, he took on the role of Application Manager for the European Patent Register and was involved in the introduction of the Federated Register service. Ignacio is the European Patent Register stakeholder in several EPO projects including the introduction of a Unitary Patent Register. Since 2010, he has been EPO country co-ordinator for the European Case Law Identifier (ECLI) and helps out with EPO activities to improve and promote access to patent-related court decisions in Europe.

Klaus Baumeister
European Patent Office

Klaus Baumeister works as a publication data expert in the EPO's Principle Directorate Patent Knowledge. He joined the EPO in 2001 and has been working since then on the production and quality of electronic patent publication data. He is responsible for the EP authority file and PATSTAT Register product.

Patrick Le Gonidec
European Patent Office

Patrick Le Gonidec has a Master's in structural geology and a Master of Computer Science. He joined the EPO Principle Directorate Patent Information in 2002. He is a service life cycle manager for the following products: European Publication Server, Global Dossier, Global Patent Index (GPI), EP full-text search and EP Bulletin search.

Vesna Hassler
European Patent Office

Vesna Hassler holds a PhD in computer engineering and communications from Graz University of Technology. She has worked at universities in Zagreb, Graz, Vienna and Singapore and has published a number of conference and journal papers, as well as two books (Artech House). She participated in the first digital signature project in Austria and worked for the Austrian Secure Information Technology Center (A-SIT). In 2004 she joined the EPO in Vienna. Her current interests include patent information and big data analytics.

Andrée Lahaye
European Patent Office

Andrée Lahaye holds a degree in bioengineering and a PhD in molecular biology. She worked at the science company Solvay as a researcher in genetic engineering and later as a patent information specialist. She joined the EPO's Directorate Cooperation in 2003 and the Directorate Patent Information Promotion in 2012. She is Product Marketing Manager for Espacenet.

Jutta Haußer
European Patent Office

Jutta Haußer studied Japanese and Chinese studies at the University of Munich, Germany, and holds a PhD in Japanese Studies. She spent several years in Taiwan and Japan. From 1992 to 2005, she was assistant professor at the University of Munich, LMU. She joined the European Patent Office in 2007. As a member of the EPO's Asian patent information team (now Worldwide IP Knowledge), she is responsible for facilitating access to and monitoring patent information from Japan, China, Brazil and other jurisdictions. She regularly gives seminars on Asian patent information.

Sofie Leplae
European Patent Office

Sofie Leplae graduated from the University of Leuven. She joined the EPO in 2007 as a Patent Information Officer in the Patent Data Services team. She is a legal event data specialist and handles the INPADOC worldwide legal event data in XML. She is an expert on DOCDB worldwide bibliographic data in XML and a trainer on patent families and INPADOC legal events.

Alejandro Flores-Jiménez
European Patent Office

Alejandro Flores holds degrees in telecommunications engineering (PhD) from UPC, Spain, in electrical engineering (MSc) from University of California, Berkeley, and in law (MA) from UNED, Spain. In 2017 he obtained an Executive MBA with ESADE Business School. He joined the European Patent Office in 1999 as a patent examiner in the field of traffic control. Besides search, examination and opposition work, he was also a documentalist and classifier as well as a trainer for internal and external audiences. In 2008 he passed the European qualifying examination. In 2010 he took over the e-learning unit of the European Patent Academy and is currently Programme Manager of "Strengthening the EPN: knowledge" under the EPO's Strategic Plan 2023.

Stephanie James
European Patent Office

Stephanie James joined the EPO in 2002 working as a formalities officer and pre-classifier. In 2014, she joined the Patent Information Promotion directorate, creating technical and promotional documentation for Espacenet and the Register. Today, she is a user support content creator and one of the Patent Knowledge News editors.

Jürgen Mühl
European Patent Office

Jürgen Mühl joined the European Patent Office in 2009 and has been working for the EPO's Worldwide IP team, formerly "Asian patent information services", since then. He is mainly in charge of services related to Korea and provides users with information on a variety of topics such as patent documentation, searches in free information sources and regular updates on new IP-related developments in Korea and other Asian jurisdictions. He is also editor-in-chief of the EPO's news channel "Patent Knowledge News". Before joining the office, Jürgen obtained a Master's degree in Korean Studies at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. He also spent part of his studies in Korea for language education at Ewha University in Seoul.

Stefan Luginbühl
European Patent Office

Stefan Luginbühl is Head of Department European Legal Affairs at the European Patent Office, where he deals with a wide range of subjects related to patent law and patent litigation, with emphasis on the implementation of the EU Unitary Patent package into the existing European patent system. He participated in several diplomatic and intergovernmental conferences on the reform of the European patent system and the international litigation system. He is a lecturer at different universities and is the author and editor of several books and articles on patent procedure and patent litigation in Europe and China.

Véronique Willems
SMEunited

Ms Willems has been representing Crafts and SMEs in Europe as the Secretary General of SMEunited (formerly UEAPME) since January 2017. She started her career at UNIZO (a Belgian member organisation of SMEunited) in 1999 as Policy Officer in charge of education, training and SME consultancy. She went on to work at the regional office (Vlaams-Brabant & Brussel), where she was in charge of advocacy at regional level, mentorship programmes and bespoke consultancy for entrepreneurs. She became Head of European Affairs at UNIZO in 2009, responsible for advocacy on policies affecting SMEs at EU level. In January 2016, she was nominated as the deputy to the SME representative for Belgium at the European Economic and Social Committee. Ms Willems holds a law degree from Vrije Universiteit Brussels and a Master's Degree in commercial sciences/business management from VLEKHO Brussels.

Klaus Haft
Hoyng Rokh Monegier

As a qualified German attorney ("Rechtsanwalt") and physicist (master's degree), Klaus is a trial lawyer in the field of intellectual property law, specialising in patent litigation in particular. In addition, he advises on licensing agreements, research and development agreements, the law on employee inventions and trade secrets. He acts for clients before the national German courts, collaborates on opposition proceedings and co-ordinates multinational litigation cases. Klaus was a member of the Board of the European Patent Lawyers Association (EPLAW) for seven years, the last two of them as its President, and currently serves as a member of its Advisory Board. He is also President Elect of the Licensing Executives Society (LES) Germany and a member of the Executive Board of the Munich IP Dispute Resolution Forum. 

Joachim Fiedler
FIDLOCK GmbH

German inventor Joachim Fiedler was born in Kassel in 1967. Driven by innovation from a young age, he considered studying atomic physics after finishing high school but instead he enrolled at the Berlin University of Arts and became a professional cellist. He performed with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and toured around the world, from South America to North Korea. The combination of bicycles and musical instruments laid the foundation for his company FIDLOCK - at age 16 he developed a carrying system to transport his cello case with his bike. This was followed by a magnetic bow holder, which ultimately spawned the idea for his popular school bag fastener. Joachim has been the managing partner of FIDLOCK since founding the company in 2007. He currently lives with his wife and two children in Hanover, which is also the location of FIDLOCK's headquarters.

Claire Fritz
Eurice GmbH

Prior to joining Eurice in 2014, Claire Fritz worked as a Business Development Manager in an international industrial group and gained experience in strategic controlling and business valuations, including financial modelling and post-merger integration processes. Since entering the IP world, Claire has built an extensive track record in successful project and stakeholder management of IP and innovation support initiatives, such as the European IP Helpdesk, the South-East Asia IP SME Helpdesk, the India IP SME Helpdesk, the Horizon IP Scan service and several projects for and with the EUIPO. Since 2018, Claire has also been a trainer for IP campaigning, IP as a business asset and IP in collaborative ventures.

Ilja Rudyk
European Patent Office

Ilja Rudyk is a core member of the EPO's Chief Economist unit. He has co-authored several studies on the role of patents and technology in the European economy and provides expert economic insight into issues relating to innovation and technology commercialisation.

Susanna Kernthaler
European Patent Office

Susanna Kernthaler has a degree in law from the University of Vienna. She has over 20 years of experience in the field of IP, with a focus on international trade marks. Since 2019 she has been working in the PATLIB team, involved in the implementation of the PATLIB 2.0 project and responsible for the annual PATLIB conference.

Laura Camacho
Agencia ES PATLIB Centre

Laura Camacho is a qualified technical project manager at the Andalusian Innovation and Development Agency (IDEA) with over 15 years' experience. She is responsible for providing advice and assistance on intellectual property matters, as well as for devising and expanding entrepreneurship training. She also works at the Almeria provincial office of IDEA, examining and evaluating innovation projects.

Enrico Luzzatto
European Patent Office

Enrico Luzzatto studied chemistry at the Sapienza University of Rome. He joined the EPO as an examiner in 1989 and passed the European qualifying examination in 1998. He became operational director in 2010. He has also been actively involved in training EPO examiners and has given several lectures on patenting and procedural matters. He joined the European Patent Academy as Senior Advisor in 2018 and has been Senior Advisor in Directorate Patent Knowledge Promotion since 2020.

Ivan Stefanic
European Innovation Council (EIC)

Ivan Stefanic is EIC Programme Manager for food chain technologies, novel & sustainable food. Since 2013 he has been an EU IP Helpdesk Ambassador. He is the founding and executive director of TERA TEHNOPOLIS Ltd., established in 2002 as a "one-stop shop" for technology-based entrepreneurs. Ivan is also a full professor at the Faculty of Agrobiotechnical Sciences Osijek in the field of economics and entrepreneurship in agribusiness, and a leader of the Research Group Agriculture and Resource Economics and Entrepreneurship. He obtained a BSc and an MSc at the University of Osijek and a PhD at the University of Zagreb. Ivan has been a visiting scientist at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU), Vienna, at North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, and at the University of Reading, UK.

Sander de Vrieze
Centexbel

A Belgian national, Sander De Vrieze holds a PhD in textile engineering. For the last 12 years, Sander has been working at Centexbel, a Belgian PATLIB centre. As a consultant, Sander helps Belgian textile companies with their questions regarding intellectual property. Most of the centre's clients are SMEs, but inventors, start-ups and large companies also pass by with their innovative challenges from time to time. Sander is a member of the board of the Belgian Patent Information User Group, BEPIUG.

Bastian July
GoodIP

Dr Bastian July is the CEO of GoodIP, which helps start-ups protect their innovations. Before Bastian founded GoodIP, he successfully negotiated various multimillion patent licence agreements for the lighting company Osram and ran Osram's patent litigations globally. Bastian is admitted to practice law in Germany and New York.

Angel Aledo Lopez
European Patent Office

Angel joined the EPO in January 2019 and was appointed Chief Technology Officer in March 2019. During his career, he has held different positions in both technical and managerial roles, contributing to the digital transformation of several organisations. Angel has also assisted with academic research and the development of tools for managing IP rights and corporate websites and has advised widely on the use of state-of-the-art technology to improve business processes.

Catriona Bruce
IP Australia

Dr Catriona Bruce leads IP Australia's Patent Analytics Hub, providing patent analytics to government and researchers. With a background in biotechnology and patent examination, and 14 years in the public service, Catriona enjoys finding new ways to use patent data to add value for customers.

Marcus McDonald
Australian Government Defence Science and Technology Group

Mr Marcus McDonald is a technology foresight analyst for Defence. His team conducts horizon scanning for future technologies and assesses potential impacts. This helps Defence and national security stakeholders to identify and innovatively plan for future developments and disruptions.

Rebecca Doolan
Australian Government's Department of Industry, Science and Resources

Dr Rebecca Doolan leads the Scientific & National Security Team in the Critical Technologies Hub, providing balanced, evidence-based advice to inform government policy. Rebecca enjoys collaborating across the public service to present complex information in meaningful, accessible ways.

Johannes Schaaf
European Patent Office

Johannes Schaaf holds an MBA and a Master's degree in physics. He worked as an engineer and innovation consultant in the corporate technology unit at Siemens and led the community of practice innovation management. He used to be an examiner in the area of laser technology at the German Patent and Trade Mark Office. In 2005, he joined the European Patent Office in Vienna and now works in the Directorate Patent Knowledge Promotion, PATLIB.

Julie Callaert
KU Leuven

Dr Julie Callaert graduated in industrial psychology in 2001 (KU Leuven, Belgium) and obtained her PhD in applied economics in 2009 (KU Leuven). Since then, she has been working as a research expert at ECOOM (Flemish Centre for R&D Monitoring, KU Leuven), where she manages the Technometrics study group, which provides patent indicators to the Flemish government to support its technology policy. She is associate editor for the journal Scientometrics. As a member of the INCENTIM research division from the KU Leuven Faculty of Business and Economics, she is involved in several European Framework projects. Her research is primarily oriented towards the development and analysis of novel and enhanced patent indicators, with a particular interest in the dynamics of science and technology interplay, including academic entrepreneurship.

Christian Soltmann
European Patent Office

Christian Soltmann is a product manager in the EPO's Patent Data Services team. He holds a PhD in materials science and a MAS in intellectual property. He joined the EPO in 2013 and is currently involved in maintaining and further developing the EPO worldwide legal event data (INPADOC) service. He has several years of experience lecturing in the field of patent information and intellectual property, both on behalf of the EPO at various events in Europe and as a lecturer in the academic sector. He also makes an active contribution to the EPO's work in the field of patent analytics and training.

Viktor Rudolf
IAMIP

Viktor Rudolf holds a degree in industrial engineering focusing on European energy management. Viktor previously worked for several years at ABB in various roles, both as an R&D Engineer and an IP Analyst. During his time as an IP Analyst, Viktor conducted competitor analyses and developed an in-house IP analysis tool for conducting landscaping and portfolio assessments. Since 2013, Viktor has been working as one of the co-founders of IamIP. Currently he is the head of the Customer Service team, which helps all IamIP customers get the most out of IamIP tools and find answers to their questions. He is also the product manager for the various IamIP software tools, responsible for determining their further developments.

Gabor Tamas Szabó
BioNTech

Gabor Tamas Szabó MD, PhD has worked as an interventional cardiologist for more than ten years and conducted clinical and preclinical research in diverse fields, such as acute and chronic coronary syndromes, acute arrythmias, heart failure and coronary physiology. In 2019, he joined BioNTEch SE, Germany, and is a member of the Protein Replacement Therapies Working Group, led by Professor Katalin Kariko. The focus of his current project is the optimisation of mRNA technology and its usage in different applications. Besides his research activities at BioNTech, Gabor Tamas Szabó is also a lecturer at the Center for Biomedical Research, Medical University of Vienna, Austria.

José Aguilar
Instituto Pedro Nunes, Portugal

José Ricardo Aguilar works at the Knowledge and Valorisation Department of the Instituto Pedro Nunes (IPN), Coimbra, Portugal. IPN is a private non-profit association for the promotion of applied research, entrepreneurship and incubation of tech-based start-up companies, as well as a PATLIB centre. José's day-to-day work since 2002 has been to promote the use of the IP system within IPN's innovation ecosystem, assisting researchers and entrepreneurs with the fundamentals of IP and tech transfer. José is also a guest IP lecturer at the School of Pharmacy of the Universidade de Coimbra, member of the EPO Standing Advisory Committee on Patent Information and Documentation, member of the EUIPO Observatory SME Expert Group, and member of the European Association of Research and Technology Organisations (EARTO) Legal Experts Working Group. He is also responsible for the legal support to ESA Space Solutions Portugal, hosted by IPN, and a researcher at the Space Law Research Center (SPARC) at Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal.

Chiara Maiorino
EIT Health InnoStars

Chiara is an expert in life science innovation management. She completed a Master's degree in Medical Biotechnologies in 2008, and has a PhD in Molecular Medicine. In 2014, she moved into the area of technology transfer management, working at Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa, Italy. She has also participated in professional exchanges at the University of Southern Denmark and at the National Institutes of Health in the US. From 2016 to 2018, she led the China-Italy Technology Transfer Centre at the Città della Scienza in Naples, Italy.

Chiara is also a FORTH innovation method facilitator. Since February 2018 she has been the Education Lead for Italy, supporting the eight Italian network partners - Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Università degli Studi di Torino, Synlab SDN spa, Synlab Italia srl, BioCheckUp Srl, il Centro per i Biomateriali Avanzati dell'Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Fondazione Bruno Kessler and ART-ER S.Cons.P.A. - as well as Italian startups and scale-ups in the health sector.

Peter Oksen
World Intellectual Property Organization

Peter has more than 25 years' experience in socio-economic development and natural resources management and holds a PhD in International Development Studies. He has lived in SE Asia for a decade, working as a researcher, consultant and head of the Danida Environmental Support Programme in Indonesia. Before joining WIPO in 2018, he helped develop the environmental and social safeguard approaches and tools for the World Food Programme in Rome. At WIPO GREEN, Peter is responsible for acceleration projects, research, expert guidance and development of the database of needs and technologies. Peter is also the creator and owner of the website SustainabIeSuccessStories.org.

Roberta Romano-Götsch
European Patent Office

Roberta Romano-Götsch is Chief Sustainability Officer at the EPO. Before, she was Chief Operating Officer of one of the three technical sectors at the EPO, responsible for leading over 1 600 staff (patent examiners, managers and formalities and administrative staff) in Munich and The Hague.Roberta has a strong background in industrial chemistry, having obtained her PhD in organic chemistry from the Technical University of Munich, and worked at Procter & Gamble before joining the EPO in 1997.

Benoit Olbrechts
Sirris

After obtaining a PhD in microelectronics and nanofabrication technologies and working on international R&D projects for 15 years, Benoit spent five years in the exciting world of start-ups, where he learned from the inside how to develop an innovative product along with an effective intellectual property strategy. Since the beginning of 2020, Benoit has been with Sirris, the Collective Center for the Technology Industry in Belgium, which is an R&D centre dedicated to supporting companies with their innovation processes from both a technical and strategic point of view. He is responsible for the technology scouting and intellectual property services.

Alexander Klenner-Bajaja
European Patent Office

Alexander Klenner-Bajaja has a PhD in bioinformatics. He joined the EPO in 2014 as a member of an IT team working on automated search. In 2019, he became the head of the newly created Data Science department. The Data Science team is working on solutions using artificial intelligence to solve challenges in the patent grant process, such as automated classification of applications and automated prior-art search.

Pierre Held
European Patent Office

Pierre Held, a French national, works at Directorate Classification and File Management, EPO The Hague. He holds a PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Strasbourg and joined the EPO as a patent examiner in 1997, before moving to Directorate Classification in 2004. He is a member of the EPO-USPTO bilateral Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) Joint Governance Board and of the Asian Patent Expert Group. As a project leader of the CPC cooperation project under the EPO's Strategic Plan, he manages the EPO's international classification activities. Pierre is also a trainer and presenter at in-house and external events

Linus Wretblad
Uppdragshuset / IPscreener

Linus has 20 years of experience supporting IPR and innovation processes. He started out as an examiner at the Swedish Patent Office and now focuses on prior-art searches and patent landscape analysis. He has a Master of Science in physics and electronics, a French DEA degree in microelectronics and has undertaken additional MBA studies on innovation and entrepreneurship. He was the president of the Confederacy of European Patent Information User Groups (CEPIUG) from 2015 to 2017 and is currently one of the board members of the ISBQPIP for certification of Patent Information Professionals. Linus is the co-founder of Uppdragshuset, providing high-level patent information search services. He is most recently involved in a EUROSTAR project with the Technical University of Vienna on AI-supported information retrieval, resulting in IPscreener offering a platform for semantic AI text-based screening of prior art.

Tom Withnell
European Patent Office

Thomas Withnell joined the EPO in August 2021 and is working on the PATLIB 2.0 project with a focus on technology transfer. Prior to joining the EPO, he led the Technology Transfer team at the University of Vienna and has experience in project management. His background is in electrical power engineering and superconductivity, and he has experience in both academia and industry.

Laura MacDonald
ASTP

Laura has headed up the HQ of the pan-European members association for knowledge transfer professionals (ASTP) since September 2016. Her role there combines responsibility for professional training events, conferences and advocacy to enhance capacity-building in the knowledge transfer sector. Originally qualified as a Scots lawyer specialising in EU and IP law, her transition to the world of academic/industrial collaborations started in 1992 when she established the first in-house legal unit at a UK university to support these collaborations. Laura then worked at different UK universities (Dundee then Edinburgh) before moving to the Netherlands, where she spent ten years at Leiden University and Medical Centre with responsibility across all aspects of knowledge transfer activities. She has been active in key professional organisations which bring together players in this ecosystem, such as the Licensing Executives Society, AUTM and ASTP.

Paula Larisa Patras
European Patent Office

Paula Larisa Patras joined the EPO in 2009. She has a degree in electronics and telecommunications and a background in network testing, technical pre-sales, product and project management. As a patent examiner Paula worked in the field of wireless networks for over twelve years. She also acted as product manager of the EPO-internal non-patent literature (NPL) acquisition tool. In 2020 Paula was appointed deputy project manager for the IT Co-operation Search project, becoming project manager in 2021. In 2022 Paula moved to Directorate IT Cooperation Partnerships and is currently fully dedicated to managing the IT Co-operation Search project, bringing new search technology to EPC contracting states.

Barnaby Hoyal
European Patent Office

Barnaby Hoyal joined the EPO in 2005. He is a chemical engineer with a background in consultancy and project management. He currently leads a team of examiners working in the field of absorbents and non-wovens. As a patent examiner he has also worked in the fields of gas separation, microfluidics, fuel cells and battery technology. In 2020, working with Directorate IT Cooperation, he initiated and continues to support a project bringing new search technology to EPC contracting states. From 2012 to 2016 Barnaby worked with Directorate International Cooperation providing training in search for many national patent offices and was responsible for the co-ordination of IT-related activities in the IP5 programme.