个人简介:

David is a patent attorney and partner and has worked at Barker Brettell for more than 18 years. Over this time he has built a practice focused on writing and prosecuting patents and designs, as well as a significant amount of dispute resolution.

David’s background is in physics and works largely within the engineering and electronic fields. He has a broad client base but has particular specialism in the automotive and energy sectors where we has drafted patents relating to radar sensing, power electronics, transmission equipment, epicyclic gearboxes for wind turbines and naval propulsion. Outside those fields, he has drafted and prosecuted patents for medical scanning equipment, consumer goods, security equipment and much more.

David also has vast experience in design and other IP protection and enforcement and has been involved in a project to block the sale of counterfeit products using registered design protection; analysis of infringement; contacting the infringers and negotiating settlements. David is one of the few UK patent attorneys to have the Higher Courts Litigator qualification, allowing him to bring and defend IP cases at all levels of the English & Welsh civil court system.

工作经历:

  • Advising Flowgem during the development of an innovative leak detector for household plumbing, from concept to sale to a FTSE 100 company in just two years. I worked very closely with the company’s management as their product evolved, making sure that they had an appropriate portfolio of patent and design protection which made them attractive to their eventual (and very early, in terms of start-ups) buyer
  • Setting up an enforcement programme with a major automotive OEM to block the sale of counterfeit wheels using registered design protection, including analysis of each infringement, contacting the infringers and negotiating settlements where possible and issuing proceedings were not. Led to a substantial decrease in the number of counterfeit wheels available on common retail and auction websites
  • A series of Oral Proceedings for Raytheon, before the EPO Technical Boards of Appeal where I had to battle to overturn the rejection of the patent applications for high performance computing systems, in particular against a Board of Appeal who had decided to take an unorthodox approach to some well settled patent law. I managed to overturn one of the rejections, and potentially bypass another through the parallel prosecution of different claims, despite a somewhat hostile Board and previous pessimism about the chances of success
  • Obtaining orders from the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court forcing an infringer of my client Lichfield Leather’s copyright in a hand bag design both to stop and to provide the information as to the source of the counterfeit bags, necessitating taking contempt of court proceedings against the infringer
  • Providing an expert report and appearing in the High Court as an expert witness in NGM Sustainable Developments Ltd v Wallis and others, where I acted on behalf of some of the defendants as the expert on patent prosecution, and was able to assist the court by advising on the likelihood of a particular patent application granting in a useful form

他人评价:

“I’d just like to thank you very much for all your work on FlowGem since we started. You have been a very knowledgeable (and patient!) guide, through the world of patent prosecution, which was incredibly valuable to us, with little experience in the process. Your work and guidance has been a critical part of helping us build a business that was attractive to buyers.”

Bill Sneyd, Co-Founder, FlowGem.