Matt Dixon is the Immediate Past President of the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys (CIPA) and Executive Chair at Beck Greener LLP.

Passionate about building motivated teams backed by efficient systems to grow successful businesses, Matt has held significant leadership positions in several notable UK patent and trade mark firms. For over 15 years, he has been a prominent member of the Council of the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys, the UK’s largest membership organisation in the field of intellectual property, serving as CIPA’s elected President in 2024. On behalf of CIPA he has actively promoted the capability of UK patent attorneys to represent before the Unified Patent Court (UPC) and has provided evidence to UK Government regarding support for innovative SME businesses.

Matt’s technical expertise covers the broad fields of physics, engineering, electronics and software, working with companies in sectors as diverse as medical devices, wind turbines, robotic vehicles, online gambling, telecommunications security and air conditioning systems. In addition to providing commercially focused IP strategy advice, he has also represented major multi-national corporations in multi-party Opposition and Appeal proceedings before the European Patent Office, particularly in the field of medical devices, such as absorbent products, negative pressure wound therapy, auto-injectors and super-resolution fluorescence microscopy. Recently, Matt has represented clients before the Central Division of the UPC in Paris.

Prior to joining Beck Greener, Matt worked Of Counsel for an Aberdeen-based start-up patent practice, supporting the founder with the growth of the business. He has led the London office and the Engineering team of one of the UK’s largest IP firms. He founded the London office of a new IP practice with an innovative business model based entirely on fixed fees. He trained and qualified at one of the UK’s most respected patent and trade mark practices, becoming a partner in that firm’s Munich office.

Christopher is an experienced patent litigator, managing strategic, cross-border disputes around Europe and beyond, including oppositions and appeals before the European Patent Office as a legal practitioner and disputes before the Unified Patent Court as a UPC Representative. He has particular expertise in pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, medical devices and telecommunications, and is well known for his work on the interface between IP, competition and regulatory law. Christopher also helps clients with other intellectual property, antitrust and pharmaceutical regulatory litigation, arbitration and mediation.

Tilman Müller-Stoy, a renowned German patent litigator, secured the first inter partes preliminary injunction under the Unitary Patent for clients 10x Genomics and Harvard, establishing himself as a pioneer in the European Unified Patent Court. With over two decades of IP experience, he’s led hundreds of multinational patent disputes, specialising in high-profile cases across various sectors such as telecommunications, IT, automotive, and life sciences. As a trained commercial mediator, he also guides clients through IP-related alternative dispute resolution processes globally.

Rachel is a Patent/IP Litigation Partner and advises on contentious intellectual property matters for clients across a broad range of sectors including, life sciences, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, chemicals, food and beverage, aviation, media and telecommunications industries. Rachel has extensive experience of litigating before the UK Patents Court, High Court and Court of Appeal. Rachel regularly advises on pan-European IP litigation strategy, including UPC litigation. Rachel is the Head of the Law Group at HGF and co-leads HGF’s UPC offering.

Jimmy, a seasoned European Patent Attorney and Litigator, specializes in biotechnology and life sciences patents globally. With expertise in immunology, genetic engineering, and biosensors, he serves a diverse clientele, including biotech companies and university spin-outs. His background in genetics and protein biochemistry enriches his ability to draft and prosecute patents across multiple jurisdictions, managing extensive patent portfolios with precision.

Chris is an award-winning lawyer specialising in patents and technical disputes. He works with clients across the life sciences, engineering, and telecoms sectors.
He advises clients on freedom to operate, product launch, patent litigation, and licensing strategies including FRAND licence disputes.
He’s acted in over 20 English patent trials and appeals, as well as numerous arbitration cases.

Chris advises on strategy and the coordination of multi-jurisdictional patent advice and litigation. He helps clients win infringement/validity disputes and to navigate through the remedies and relief available including interim and final injunctions, financial compensation claims, destruction of infringing products, modification of products, court declarations, publicity orders and costs awards.
Chris has a strong background in natural sciences and multi-jurisdictional patent disputes. Before practising law, Chris graduated with a degree in natural sciences, specialising in experimental physics. In his early career, he also gained experience working in Washington DC and California.
He speaks and writes regularly on patent issues.

Daniel specialises in biologics and pharmaceuticals, focusing on EPO opposition proceedings with extensive experience in both attack and defence, including high-profile cases like AbbVie v. Janssen and Amgen v. Sanofi. He also handles original drafting, prosecution, opinions, and freedom to operate analyses, adeptly navigating pan-European litigation. With a passion for aiding clients in bringing innovative medicines to market, Daniel boasts comprehensive knowledge of supplementary protection certificates (SPCs) and has contributed to key cases at the Court of Justice of the European Union.

Member of the Amsterdam bar and the bar of the Supreme Court of The Netherlands.

Co-founder of HOYNG ROKH MONEGIER.

50 plus years of international patent litigation experience.

Emeritus professor of IP law Tilburg University.

Member of the Drafting Committee of the UPC Rules of Procedure.

Since 2022 Chairman of the Advisory Committee of the UPC.

Prof. Hoyng publishes each week on Monday on his “Unfiltered” all decisions with his comments which are published during the previous week. On Tuesday a podcast is published with his comments. Since the start of the UPC he has commented more than 1200 decisions.
He is counsel at HOYNG ROKH MONEGIER.

András Kupecz holds an LLM in private law from Amsterdam University and an MSc from Utrecht University with focus on molecular biology. He was active as a European patent litigator, dually qualified as a lawyer and a European patent attorney, before taking up his duties at the UPC.

Klaus Grabinski studied law at the Universities of Trier, Geneva and Cologne. He passed the 1st and 2nd state examination in 1988 and 1992. He was a university assistant and received a Doctor Iuris from Trier University in 1991.

He served on the German Federal Court of Justice’s 10th Civil Division, including as the Deputy Presiding Justice of the Division that has, inter alia, jurisdiction on patent litigation matters. Before joining the German Federal Court of Justice in 2009, he held a number of judicial roles, including as a presiding judge of a patent litigation division at the Düsseldorf Regional Court and as a judge at the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court.

He was an external legally qualified member of the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office.

Since November 2022, Klaus Grabinski serves as President of the Court of Appeal and chairperson of the Presidium of the Unified Patent Court.

Dr Penny Gilbert is a Partner, and founder, of Powell Gilbert

Penny is an English and Irish qualified Solicitor and a registered UPC representative.  She has an MA in Biochemistry, and a DPhil in Molecular Biology, and specialises in patent litigation, particularly in the life sciences.  She also represents clients in patent licence disputes before the UK courts and in arbitration proceedings.

Much of Penny’s work involves advising on parallel European patent litigation strategies, including for the UPC, and she has a wealth of experience in coordinating actions before European courts.

In UK litigation, she has acted in a number of precedent-setting UK cases, including at appeal level, such as Regeneron v Kymab (Supreme Court – sufficiency); HGS v Eli Lily (Supreme Court – industrial application; CJEU – Art 3a SPC regulation); Biogen v AbbVie (Humira – Arrow declarations), Eisai v GW Pharma (UK jurisdiction over non-UK rights) and has acted in cases involving the application of SPC law (Pharmaq v Intervet – referral from the Norwegian court  to the EFTA court; Royalty Pharma – referral from the German court to the CJEU).  Her most recent cases have involved a review of the UK law of plausibility Glenmark and others v Astra Zeneca and litigation of patents relating to SARS-CoV-2 vaccines:  Moderna v BioNTech and Pfizer; BioNTech and Pfizer v CureVac.

As a former President of EPLAW (the European Patent Lawyers’ Association), and a current member of its advisory board, she has been involved with its aims of harmonising European Patent law, including involvement in the training of judges for the UPC. She is a frequent lecturer on aspects of IP law affecting the life sciences sector and has been a tutor on the Oxford University Diploma in Intellectual Property Law and Practice course, teaching patent litigation.

Her work has been recognized with a number of awards and top tier directory listings, including Managing IP EMEA Awards – Practitioner of the Year, IP Star and Top 250 Women in IP, IAM Global Leader, Legal 500 Hall of Fame, LMG European Life Sciences Awards: IP Lawyer of the Year: Biotech, Who’s Who Legal’s Life Science Patent Litigation Lawyer of the Year, Women in Business Law Europe, Life Sciences Lawyer of the year and Best in Patents Award, World IP Review Leader and WIPR’s Influential Women in IP, Who’s Who Legal Patents and Life Sciences Global Elite Thought Leader, LSIPR top 50 Life Sciences leaders; Expert Guides – Patents UK, Best of the Best; Women in Business Law “Outstanding Achievement Award” , 2025.

Estonian Kai Härmand is the second permanent judge at the Nordic-Baltic regional division. Like Stefan Johansson, she is currently only involved in the UPC cases pending before this division. Parallel to the UPC, Kai Härmand has been a judge at the Harju County Court since 2020. Prior to this, she was deputy secretary general at the Estonian Ministry of Justice and a legal adviser at the Estonian Patent Office. Between 2006 and 2014, Härmand was a legally qualified member of the EPO’s Enlarged Board of Appeal.

Born and educated in Hong Kong with a PhD in chemistry and The only Chinese patent attorney working in a Beijing Chinese patent firm from Hong Kong.
Past co-chair of the AIPLA’s IP Practice in China committee and current co-chair of the AIPLA’s IP Practice in the Far East committee and is also Vice Chair of the Asian Practice committee of the IPO.

Trained under the UK system and took the UK CIPA examinations, and passed some of the papers. Responsible for publishing articles on China IP update for the UK CIPA Journal.

Member of AIPLA, IPO, UK CIPA and speaks several languages: Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese), English

Annette Flaherty joined the patent profession in 2001 whilst completing her PhD thesis. Annette has a PhD and 1st class BEng honours degree in Mechanical Engineering, both obtained following completion of a technical apprenticeship in the earthmoving sector.

As a patent and design attorney Annette has experience working with and advising a range of clients including large multinational companies, SMEs and individuals about UK and European patent and unregistered and registered design protection. Her technical area of specialism is general/mechanical engineering technology, which includes oil and gas technology, renewable energy technology, automotive technology, earthmoving, agricultural technology, plumbing technology, optical fibre technology and tobacco technology.

Annette joined Murgitroyd as part of the acquisition of Creation IP by Murgitroyd in April 2022.

Jaime’s practice focuses on patenting complex, interdisciplinary technologies and building strategic patent portfolios, with an emphasis on evaluating and mitigating risk from third-party patents. She advises clients in a variety of market sectors, including bioinformatics, medical devices, robotics, microfluidics, semiconductor fabrication, digital signal processing, photonics, advanced imaging, optics and ultrafast spectroscopy, and fabrication of complex materials and devices that use them. Jaime also has deep experience in disputes, including litigation, arbitration, licensing, and trade secrets.

Jaime draws upon her extensive experience gained in her previous roles at international law firms in the United States and United Kingdom to better advise her clients. She has established strategic global patent portfolios and supported disputes for a variety of clients and technologies, from genomic sequencing to smartphones, to blood glucose monitors, and inorganic materials. She also drafted applications for direct filing in the European Patent Office; prosecuted European, U.S., and international patent applications; performed freedom-to-operate and infringement analyses of third-party patents in numerous technical fields; and advised on U.S. contractual issues.

Within the start-up community, Jaime has been involved in the University of San Diego, the SBDC (Small Business Development Center) at UCI Beall Applied Innovation, the USC Stevens Center for Innovation, and the Zahn Innovation Center at the City College of New York, providing innovators with essential information on intellectual property needs.

Takeshi is an IP strategist and researcher, and also plays various roles in education and enlightenment activities in IP and entrepreneurships.
Takeshi S Komatani is currently principal litigation certified patent attorney at TAKASHIMA International Patent Office, an IP law firm located in Osaka, Japan, and has a number of counsels, including in academia, start-ups and big pharma internationally. He is also qualified as a pharmacist with a certificate of Kampo and natural medicines specialist qualification.

Takeshi received his PhD from the University of Tokyo, Japan, received his LLB and LLM (global legal practice) from Keio University, and is currently a visiting professor at the Graduate School of Science, Technology and Innovation, Kobe University, teaching IP strategy in entrepreneurship, since 2021. He has completed CEIPI IP Certificate 2022 at University of Strasbourg, France. He is also a visiting professor at Graduate School of Medical and Life Sciences, Doshisha University since 2023, and also give lectures on IP practice at Keio Law School, Tokyo, and pharma IP strategy at Osaka University, Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences.

He was a researcher at F Hoffmann-La Roche in Basle, Switzerland. Thereafter, he joined Shusaku Yamamoto, a patent and law firm in Osaka, Japan, in 1998, and then moved to TAKASHIMA International Patent Office in 2023. He has completed the EU-recognised PharmaTrain course at Osaka University in 2017. He was also qualified as a board-certified member of the Japanese Association of Pharmaceutical Medicine. He has been chosen as an IP mentoring expert of the IPAS programme run by the JPO since 2019. He has also been chosen as an IP adviser of MEDISO run by the MHLW. He has won Grand Prix of IP practitioner’s division of Fourth IP BASE AWARD in March 2023 hosted by the JPO.

He is a member of the AIPPI and vice chair of TRIPS SC and a member of IP-GRTK SC, and a member of the editorial board of the Pharmaceutical Patent Analyst (UK). He is also a member of JPAA, APAA, IPAJ, PSA, JPA, CSAIP and AAAS. He has lectured in academia, including at Japanese and German universities and WIPO Academy, and contributed to a number of articles. He is currently a member of the Advisory Board at BioCommunity Kansai (BiocK), a Japanese government-funded organisation to create the ultimate ecosystem in the field of biotechnology based in the Kansai region, Japan.

After spending 10 years as a Research Scientist in Munich and Cambridge, Claudia entered the patent profession in 2008 and held both in-house (for two Cambridge University spinouts) and private practice roles (in London, Cambridge and Edinburgh) before becoming an IP Entrepreneur in 2019. She is the Founder of Innovare IP, a full-service legal practice, and IP Bloks, a LegalTech venture.

Claudia also spent one year working in university research commercialisation in Scotland, engaging directly with the Scottish Microelectronics Centre at the University of Edinburgh.

She is the Chair of CIPA’s IP Commercialisation Committee and Vice-Chair of epi’s IP Awareness Working Group.  She is also a Member of the UKIPO’s IP Finance Advisory Group, CIPA’s Public Affairs Committe  and epi’s IP Commercialisation Committee, as well as a Professional Member of the Economy and Enterprise Committee of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Now retired, Sandy was a Co-Founder and Senior Partner at Edinburgh and London based Award Winning law firm MBM Commercial. He sits on the CivTech Advisory Group and served for four years as Chair of Converge Challenge, Scotland’s leading company creation programme for all Scottish Universities and Research Institutes.

Sandy has also held and continues to hold many other advisory and Chair roles with third sector organisations.

After graduating in materials engineering from Imperial College London, Lucy E Wojcik trained as a patent attorney in two private practice firms before qualifying as a European patent attorney and chartered patent attorney in 1999 and moving to an in-house role for BAE Systems plc. Having gained significant commercial IP experience, Ms Wojcik became a freelance IP consultant and patent attorney for Leonardo MW (a subsidiary of Finmeccanica SpA) and, more recently, for Ocado Innovation Ltd. She was appointed head of intellectual property for Ocado Group plc in 2016. She is also a visiting lecturer on the IP practice and management course at Brunel University.

Susan began working at GSK in 1998 as a patent trainee.  Since then she’s worked in various IP roles across the company supporting small and large molecules, vaccines and technologies.  Having spent the 2018 – 2022 leading the team that provides IP support to the Pharmaceutical portfolio, she moved teams at the beginning of 2023 to perform the same role for the Vaccines part of the business.

Dr Bobby Mukherjee, Chief Counsel, IP & Technology Law – BAE Systems plc and Past President (2012-2014) of the IP Federation. He was the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys (CIPA) President for 2025. He previously served and currently sits on CIPA Council, and chaired the CIPA Internal Governance Committee in its formative stage.

Bobby is a qualified UK and European patent attorney with over 28 years’ experience of IP gained in private practice and at BAE Systems plc. He is currently the Head of IP (2009 -) at BAE Systems plc (a FTSE 30 company), which has one of the largest in-house IP teams in the UK.

Bobby has been named a Corporate IP Star by Managing Intellectual Property every year since 2015.