Diversity and Inclusion in IP – Breakfast Meeting 2022

Lee Davies, Chief Executive, CIPA

Lee Davies has been the Chief Executive of the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys (CIPA) since February 2012. Prior to this, Lee was the Deputy Chief Executive of the Institute for Learning (IfL), the professional body for further education teachers. Lee’s professional background is in engineering (mechanical services) and further education teaching. Lee has experience of the governance of professional bodies, having served as the President of the Chartered Institute of Plumbing and Heating Engineering (CIPHE) in 2011-12.
Lee says that such a varied career, from apprentice plumber to CEO of CIPA, via organisations such as the Highbury College in Portsmouth, the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) and IfL, has left him a little confused about his professional identity. Lee now identifies as an ‘association leader’, although the concept of association leadership is, in Lee’s words, “woefully undervalued and little recognised in the UK”. Lee is a passionate advocate for the association sector and is President and Chair of the Institute of Association Leadership (IAL), where he leads the Chief Executives’ Forum.

Marianne Privett, AA Thorton

Marianne Privett is a Partner and Patent Attorney at AA Thornton. Marianne helped start IP Ability in late 2019 and is one of its co-leads. Marianne has personal experience of caring responsibilities and learning disabled people, which has made her aware of the barriers some people face and determined to do what she can to remove those barriers.

Ann Meuting, Meuting Raasch Group and AIPLA First Vice President

Ann is a founding shareholder of Mueting Raasch Group, which began in 1995. Ann is a registered patent attorney with more than 30 years of practice in the areas of patent prosecution, due diligence, and related opinion work with emphasis in chemical and biotechnology patent law. Ann has been a university faculty member and worked in both government and industry laboratories before attending law school. Ann has taught various practical patent prosecution classes, and has been an active member of many organizations, including the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA) in various leadership positions. Ann is also a co-author of a Treatise on the AIA entitled PATENTS AFTER THE AIA: EVOLVING LAW AND PRACTICE (2015), and its associated guide entitled PRIOR ART AFTER THE AIA: A PRACTICAL GUIDE (2018).

https://www.mrgiplaw.com/attorney/mueting-ann-m-ph-d/

Saiful Khan, Potter Clarkson

An internationally respected attorney with over 20 years’ IP experience encompassing both in-house and private practice, Saiful brings a wealth of knowledge to his work.

He practises in a number of technical specialities within the designs and engineering and electronics and computing groups and works for clients ranging from individual inventors to SMEs and multinational corporations. 

With extensive experience of prosecuting patent applications before numerous patent offices, he has represented his clients at hearings before the EPO in Berlin, The Hague and Munich. Saiful has also taken part in interviews with USPTO examiners and his work has been used in successful global patent licensing and litigation discussions. In addition, he has conducted opinion work and has represented the interests of leading global patent holders in face-to-face patent assertion discussions. 

Saiful also has considerable international experience, frequently representing both the firm and the UK and European patent attorney profession as part of his work on the CIPA International Liaison Committee. In addition to being a tutor for the CIPA oral proceedings course for qualified attorneys, Saiful devises and delivers workshops on various aspects of UK and EP patent law throughout the world and has been appointed to the editorial board of leading industry publication, Patent Lawyer. 

He joined Potter Clarkson in 2004 following a period in-house at Nokia Corporation and at a large private practice firm in London. He became a partner in 2007.

https://www.potterclarkson.com/our-people/saiful-khan/

Tum Thach, Airbus Defence and Space

Tum started his IP career with IBM France before he moved to the US. After spending some years working in private practice with Baker Botts LLP in Houston, TX, and in-House in Texas Instruments in Dallas, Tum returned to Europe and is now leading a group of IP Attorneys in Germany, France, Great Britain and Spain as the Head of IP of Airbus Defence & Space. As a patent and trademark attorney, Tum counsels R&D Managers on IP litigation as well as M&A acquisition in Asia, the Middle East and Europe. Tum practices EP and US IP laws for more than 25 years and his technical expertise is essentially in SW, wireless technologies, Telecommunications, and recently in AI, Cybersecurity and Cloud computing. Tum is a founding member of different Cambodian and Asean IP Groups and he regularly lectures IP laws in Universities and participates in Conferences in Asia and the Middle East.