East of England Meeting 2022

Daniel Voisey, IPO

Daniel Voisey is a Senior Patent Examiner in the mobile telecoms examining group at the UK IPO. He is currently responsible for professional customer engagement, and leads the Customer Visit and Care Manager Programmes – in which capacity he is always pleased to hear feedback from Attorneys and other IP practitioners on examination practice and IPO services generally.

He joined the Patent Office as an Examiner in 2000, after several years in industry as a telecoms and EMC engineer.

Mark Pearce, Mills & Reeve

Mark helps clients to protect and exploit their intellectual property, whether it’s a new technology or brand. He makes IPR law clear and helps clients to develop effective strategies. He enjoys getting to know clients’ businesses and making IPRs work to help them grow and prosper. Mark recently worked on a case involving a small engineering business being sued for patent infringement by a US multinational. The client could not, realistically, afford full blown High Court proceedings. He realised that the client had a strong case on one point, which threatened the claimant’s patent. Focussing all of their attention on that point the team made clear that they weren’t going to fight the other issues. This high risk strategy was the only one the client could afford. After negotiating a free licence the client now regards Mark as a strategic adviser, not just a lawyer. In the most recent Chambers Guide a client said of Mark “He is fantastic: he’s straight-talking, he understands the technology and he helps us strategise”. Mark has a degree in physics and his first job was in fluid mechanics research. He is convinced that lawyers and scientists are trained to think differently, and is sure that his background not only helps him to understand a client’s technology but to understand them, as well.

Alison McGhee, AstraZeneca

Alison is Assistant General Counsel, IP, at AstraZeneca, and sits on AZ’s IP leadership team. She leads the team supporting AZ’s Respiratory and Immunology (R&I) therapeutic area and is responsible for AZ’s R&I patent estate.  In addition, Ally manages IP portfolios for significant late stage and on-market products and supports business development activities in the R&I space.

Alison has over 20 years’ experience working in-house in life sciences IP. Prior to re-joining AZ, Alison was Vice President, IP, at F-star Therapeutics, where she was a member of the company’s leadership team and responsible for global IP strategy and implementation. Alison established the UK in-house IP function, built the IP team and was involved in significant licensing and M&A activity. She joined F-star from MedImmune/Cambridge Antibody Technology (acquired by AZ) where she was responsible for their phage display IP portfolio as well as a number of products. Prior to CAT, she worked at Cambridge Enterprise, commercialising inventions arising from research at the University of Cambridge.

Alison is a Chartered Patent Attorney and European Patent Attorney. She holds an MSc (distinction) in Plant Breeding and Biotechnology from the University of East Anglia (in conjunction with the John Innes Centre) and a BSc (Hons) from the University of St Andrews in Biochemistry with Microbiology and Biotechnology.

Jaime Choi, Snell & Wilmer

Jaime Choi is an intellectual property partner of Snell and Wilmer’s San Diego office whose 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, 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. Jaime also has been active in Athena, a premier women’s advocacy organization that fast tracks women in STEM through leadership development. She is licensed to practice in California and before the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office.