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Julia has been an IP Paralegal with Edwards Limited (now part of Atlas Copco Vacuum Technique) for the past 20 years, having previously been with a pharmaceutical company. Julia became actively involved in the CIPA Paralegals’ Committee approximately 15 years ago, and am now in my second year as Chair and is also a Board Member of EPIPA.

Pete began his present career by undertaking a Postgraduate Certificate in Intellectual Property Law at Brunel University in London, before joining the Intellectual Property Office to train as a Patent Examiner. He is now a member of Legal Section and is responsible for pre-grant patent administration, providing advice across the organisation. This includes for colleagues in patent formalities & examination; register administration; document reception and publishing; as well as providing legal input for One IPO Transformation. He continues to deliver initial and advanced patent law training aimed at new examiners. Pete previously enjoyed successful careers as a physics educator in London, as well as in pub management in his native city of Manchester. In his spare time he enjoys hiking the Brecon Beacons, offshore sailing and looking after his three cats.

Peter has 32 years of experience working in the UKIPO during which he has been Deputy Director, Head of Examination in the field of Telecommunications, a Tribunal Hearing Officer and Head of Patent Information and Commercial Search Services. Peter is recognised as an expert in patent search and classification. He has previously held the post of Deputy Chairman of WIPO’s IPC Committee of Experts and has been responsible for the introduction of EPOQUENET and the Co-operative Patent Classification (CPC) here at the UKIPO. Peter is currently one of four Service Owners on our programme of digital transformation where he is most recently lead a project to introduce a new cross rights online renewal service. As Head of Business Support and IT Services, his previous achievements include the delivery of an integrated document management system, a successful mainframe migration and implementation of the Federated Register. Peter is a qualified Programme Manager with experience of contract negotiations and working with 3rd party suppliers to deliver IT solutions. He is currently Deputy Chairman of the EPO’s Technical and Operational Support Committee (TOSC) and has played a lead role in European Co-operation since 2006.

Penny has nearly 30 years’ experience as a counsellor, psychotherapist and trainer, working in a range of settings, including Zeneca (Huddersfield), Arla Foods, the NHS and in private practice as a counselling and organisational mental health consultant. However, most of her career has been spent working in Higher Education, most recently at the University of Bradford as Head of Disability, Counselling and Mental Health. After leaving Bradford in 2018, she joined the Charlie Waller Trust where she continues to work as a developing and delivering training and creating written materials for both Charlie Waller and Jonathan’s Voice.  She joined Jonathan’s voice as Mental Health Consultant and trainer in March 2022

Will Burrell is a Partner at D Young & Co LLP, having first started in the profession back in 2010 as a paralegal. Will is a UK and European Patent Attorney by background, though has particular experience and specialism in design matters. On the designs front, Will has considerable experience in registering designs both in the UK via the UKIPO and across the EU via the EUIPO (whether directly or via the Hague route), and is well versed in protecting the design of products, games, user-interfaces, and brands via the use of registered design rights in territories all over the world.

Will is also a member of the CIPA Design & Copyright Committee, and also serves as a member of the Intellectual Property Owner (IPO) Association’s Industrial Designs Committee.

Christina is a Key Account Manager and Patent Administration (PA) expert. She has worked with the EPO since 2003 in different positions and has been a PA expert for 20 years. Since 2015 she is a Key Account Manager and has participated in various projects around the EPO’s Online tools and services.

She has accompanied the roll out of MyEPO to the user community since its launch.

Viviane Gross is the Head of PCT Operations Customer Support Section at the World Intellectual Property Organization, where she has worked for over 25 years in various capacities in the PCT and in the Communications Division.  The PCT Operations Customer Support Section is dedicated to provide support for applicants and Offices worldwide on ePCT, WIPO DAS (Digital Access Service) and  WIPO Digital Certificates. We also train colleagues and customers and provide regular webinar on the various features of ePCT (filing an application, ePCT for new users, ePCT Actions, WIPO DAS, etc), available free of charge. We have also started to produce short video tutorials to help applicants and offices.

Julia has been an IP Paralegal with Edwards Limited (now part of Atlas Copco Vacuum Technique) for the past 20 years, having previously been with a pharmaceutical company. Julia became actively involved in the CIPA Paralegals’ Committee approximately 15 years ago, and am now in my second year as Chair and is also a Board Member of EPIPA.