In-house vs Private Practice – Panel Event

Please see below for a message from Ellie Lee, the Informals In-house Rep, about an upcoming panel event.

If you’d like to join the Informals In-House and Industry Group, you can sign up here and also join our LinkedIn group.

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Date: Thursday 7 April 2022

Time: 12:00 – 12:45

Location: https://ibm.webex.com/meet/ele3

Calendar invitation: click here to request.

Agenda

– 10 mins presentation from each speaker

– 15 mins of Q&A

Join us for an exciting panel event with three speakers, each of whom has had experience moving from one type of practice to another!

They will share valuable insight into the differences between in-house / private practice / start-ups, as well as discuss their career journeys.

There will be a Q&A session to ask any questions you may have. Please feel free to email Ellie any questions ahead of the event if you’d prefer (ellie.lee@uk.ibm.com).

Speaker Biographies

Belinda Gascoyne, Senior IP Law Counsel, IBM Global (ex-Americas)

Belinda is Senior IP Law Counsel at IBM where she heads up the Asia-Pacific and European IP Law teams, which together provide all aspects of IP Law support for IBM in all geographies outside the Americas. Belinda is a Chartered and European Patent Attorney with a background in Physics and has wide practical experience in drafting, filing and prosecuting patent applications as well as in IP strategy, patent management and copyright issues.

Before joining IBM in 2004, Belinda worked in private practice in London.

Belinda is also actively involved in IP policy matters and is a former President and currently a Council member of the IP Federation, and has been named for several years running, including 2021, by Managing IP as one of its “Corporate IP Stars”.

Suzanne Oliver, Director, Value Creation, Legal & IP – GroundWOW

Suzanne has recently joined the GroundWow team as Director of Value Creation, Legal and IP. GroundWOW is a high growth robotics, AI & ML start-up based in Manchester, UK.  Suzanne is responsible for GroundWOW’s value creation activities, with a particular focus on managing GroundWOW’s patent and trademark prosecution activity, leading their IP strategy, as well as IP policy development.

Previously, she was responsible for operations, Legal, IP and Procurement at SeeChange technologies, which was until recently a wholly owned subsidiary of Arm Ltd. Suzanne is a Chartered Engineer, as well as dual-qualified European and UK Patent Attorney. Before joining the SeeChange business, she was a Senior Director in the Legal Operations team in Arm’s global Legal department.

Prior to this she managed ARM’s patent and trademark prosecution teams, during which time she supported a wide range of IP strategy and global IP policy development matters for ARM. She holds multiple NED and Board positions, including holding the recent positions of Vice President and President of the UK IP Federation, during which time Suzanne often advised the UK government in the field of UK Innovation & IP. Named as an IAM ‘World Leading IP Strategist’ for 2017, and as a Managing IP ‘Corporate IP Star’ in 2018 & 2019. A national award winner for her Corporate Diversity and Inclusion Leadership work in 2018.”

Andrew Smith, Senior Associate – CMS

Andrew Smith is a senior associate in the CMS London office of a large International law firm. He works on patent prosecution, patent litigation and open source software issues. Andrew trained at a standard London private practice patent and TM attorney firm and worked on secondment at CSR whilst there. After qualification, he moved to Microsoft for a number of years until the position was relocated to Redmond; he then worked at a London start-up due to his ex-Microsoft connections. Finally, he returned to private practice when he joined CMS and has been there for four years.