From drafting patent specifications to prosecuting patent applications and advising on patent validity and infringement, I enjoy working with my clients from early stages of invention conception right through to the maturity of their patent portfolios.
As a senior patent attorney with over 20 years’ experience working with patents, I have extensive experience in drafting and prosecuting to grant patent applications, and running patent oppositions.
I also have experience in preparing and filing design applications and managing design portfolios.
I work with clients in the life sciences and biotechnology sectors helping them realise their business strategies by patent protection and steering them through the complexities of the patent landscape. I have proven experience in managing global patent portfolios and developing filing strategies to meet my clients’ business goals.
I work with a whole range of organisations including large corporates and multinationals, research institutes and universities as well as their spin-off companies, SMEs, and start-ups. I help clients to manage their portfolios irrespective of how big or small they may be.
Understanding our clients’ business is of paramount importance to me. Business directions may change, and remaining on top of those changes gives me the flexibility of always providing strategic advice to meet our client’s commercial needs and help grow their business. The same approach also allows me to identify and protect areas in our clients’ technologies that have not been fully realised previously.
I like working at Wrays because there’s always an open door policy which is enabled by our flat structure and culture. We don’t work in silos and are always collaborative with our clients and each other which results in creating a great work environment and delivering better results to our clients.
Before joining the patent attorney profession, I worked as examiner of patents at the Australian Patent Office (IP Australia) for few years. Before that, I enjoyed a career in medical research that included a PhD and working as a post-doctoral research scientist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. My medical research focused on development of a sub-unit vaccine against the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum, where I investigated antibody responses in human patients to surface proteins of this parasite to assess their potential as vaccine targets.
Qualifications
- Australian Patent Attorney
- New Zealand Patent Attorney
Industry Areas
- Life sciences & Biotechnology
- Gene & Cell therapy technologies
- Immunology & Antibody technology
- Vaccine development
- Pharmaceuticals & Pharmaceutical formulations
- Microbiology & industrial-scale biological processes
- Agribusiness, Plant biology & Plant varieties
- Healthcare
- Medical devices
- Designs
Educational Background
- PhD in Microbiology (Recombinant biology & Antibody studies) & Bachelor of Science (First Class Honours) from Monash University
- Masters of Intellectual Property Law from Melbourne University
Professional Affiliations
- Fellow of the Institute of Patent and Trade Mark Attorneys of Australia (IPTA)
- Member of the Intellectual Property Society of Australia and New Zealand (IPSANZ)
- Member of the Licensing Executives Society of Australia and New Zealand (LESANZ)
- Australian Biotechnology Association (AusBiotech)