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Computer Implemented Inventions Workshop

Wednesday 1 April 2009
Venue: Moot Court Room, Old College

This event is the idea of Professor Philip Leith, Queen's University Belfast, and it is organised as part of SCRIPT's Information Technology Law Foresight Fora. The objective of the event is to bring together a small number of practitioners and policymakers from Europe to discuss the current state of case law and practice with regards to computer implemented inventions (CII). There has been a split between UK and EPO case law, and it is hoped that this workshop will explore some of the issues that led to such state of affairs.

There are very few spaces available, if you would like to attend email Andrés Guadamuz at a.guadamuz@ed.ac.uk

Speaker and participant biogs:

José Maria Aguilar, studied telecomms engineering in Bilbao, Spain, before completing an M.Sc. in Telematics at Surrey University. After 9 years in the telecoms industry he joined the EPO as a patent examiner in 2001, where he is active in classification, search, examination and opposition of computer implemented inventions. In 2008 he passed the European Qualifying Examination, finding it useful to gain more insight into the profession, however his tennis game has still not recovered from the effort.

Chris Gabriel is of Dutch nationality and studied electrical engineering in Eindhoven. After graduation he worked in the telecommunications industry for 13 years in several technical and managerial jobs. He joined the EPO in 2002, starting in the field of telecommunications before moving to the field of computer implemented inventions and business methods in 2004.

Alex Gardiner is of British nationality and graduated as an electronic engineer from Aberdeen University. He worked on tele- and data communications on oil platforms before joining the EPO in Munich at the end of 1990. After starting with analogue electronics, he migrated via control and data bus technology and memory systems to the rapidly expanding computer implemented business method field, moving to the Hague in 1997. He is an instructor in the EPO and is involved in legal procedure development, such as the EESR. He moved back to Munich in 2007.

Andres Guadamuz is Lecturer in E-Commerce Law at the University of Edinburgh, where he is also a co-Director of the SCRIPT Law and Technology Centre. Andres has Bachelor, Practitioner and Notary Public degrees from the University of Costa Rica. He's been in the UK since 1998 and obtained an LL.M. in International Business Law at the University of Hull and an M.Phil from Queen’s University Belfast. His main areas of research are open source software and licensing, in which he has published extensively, acting as a consultant for the World Intellectual Property Organization. Other research interests are: payment systems, technology transfer, the interaction between technology and the law, and the role of intellectual property in developing countries.

Joerg Machek is of Austrian nationality and a physicist by training. He holds a Dipl.Ing. from the Technical University of Vienna and a PhD from Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK. Having spent six years in manufacturing and research on semiconductor devices he joined the European Patent Office in 1986 at the branch in The Hague. After three years he was transferred to Munich, where he is currently director in charge of searching and examining Computer Implemented Inventions and Methods for Doing Business.

David Musker. Since 1986, David has worked in house, in government and in the telecommunications industry, and is now a partner at R.G.C. Jenkins & Co, where he practises in software, electronics and telecommunications patents and in designs. He has drafted many patent applications on software in diverse fields including operating systems, compilers, object-oriented software, autonomous agents, neural networks, financial and trading software, signal processing, XML, and IP (internetworking rather than intellectual property), as well as “dot.com” applications. He is a certified Patent Attorney Litigator, has assisted in litigating software and telecommunications patents, and has conducted numerous oppositions (including the opposition against the notorious Belzberg “spreadsheet trading” patent). He sits on the Computer Technology Committee, the Designs and Copyright Committee, and the International Liaison Committee of CIPA (the Chartered Institute of Patent Agents). David has lectured at CEIPI (within Robert Schumann University, Strasbourg); QMUL; Bristol and Oxford Universities; and ETH, Zurich. He is on the Editorial Boards of ECDR and JIPLP, and edits the CIPA/ITMA Community Designs Handbook. He has written and given numerous conference talks on patents in the IT field, and his most recent contribution is “The Great Free Beer Debate”, which he is prepared to debate over a free beer!

David Pearce. David is a qualified UK patent attorney, and hopes to soon be a European patent attorney. He graduated from Oxford University in 1992 with an engineering degree and then spent several years in the wilderness (Birmingham, to be precise), first obtaining a PhD in ceramic composites and then researching and inventing piezoelectric actuators.  During a stint with a Cambridge-based start-up who had the nerve to attempt to commercialise one of his patented inventions, he became distracted by the possibilities of a career in IP, and then chose to pursue a new course of becoming a patent attorney.  After obtaining an MSc in IP from Queen Mary, University of London, David joined Potter Clarkson as a trainee in 2005 and is now an associate of the firm. In his semi-work spare time David helps to run, and occasionally contributes to, the popular IPKat weblog, as well as running a wiki covering UK patent law.  He still hopes to be an astronaut when he grows up.