Profile

• I talk a lot (my teachers might have said I talk too much, sometimes!) and I enjoy meeting new people and finding out what makes them tick. I have autism and ADHD, which makes it difficult for me to focus sometimes. I like to go to the gym and lift weights as an outlet for my energy.

I love bright colours and I have painted all of the rooms in my house in a different colour. I wear polo shirts and jeans to work and I have a large collection of brightly coloured earrings to match my moods. I prefer being casual to being formal.

I grew up on a council estate in North Yorkshire. Not many people from my area went to university. I got to where I am now through hard work and a bit of luck. My motto for life is “grab every opportunity”.

I have lived in loads of different places – I grew up in Yorkshire, went to Southampton for university, then to Buckinghamshire, Kent, Salford, Manchester and finally, Brighton. I also lived in Portugal for a year while I was a student.

I speak German, French and Portuguese (as well as my native English) and I have been teaching myself Welsh on and off for the last 5 years. I love language and being able to communicate with people all over the world. Whenever I travel to a new country, I make sure I learn at least how to say hello, please and thank you in the local language. I love that it puts a smile on people’s faces to hear you say the basics in their own language.

I like to build things. Recently, my wife and I built a dining table that was big enough to fit 12 people around it so we could have all of her family round for Christmas dinner. The next project is to build a bed for the spare bedroom. We have to wait until the weather is nicer as we need to cut all the wood outside. I don’t want lots of sawdust in the house!

I work with inventors and companies to help them protect their inventions using patents. When you get a patent for an invention, you can stop someone else from using that invention without your permission.

My technical areas include electronics (such as computers, mobile phones, displays and TVs), cars and planes, building services (such as lifts, air-conditioning systems and fire alarm and sprinkler systems), electricity generation and battery technology, and software. The most interesting patents I have worked on include ones relating to how you make a computer understand what you are saying (think Alexa, Siri, Google Home Assistant, etc.).

My days vary depending on what the most urgent tasks on my to-do list are that day. Nearly everything I do has a deadline so I use those deadlines to determine which task to do first.

I might have a meeting with an inventor to talk about their latest invention and get all of the details needed for a patent application. Then I would write the patent application for the new invention. The application contains a description of the invention and a list of claims. The claims each set out in a single sentence what the most important features of the invention are and if there are any optional features. The application may also contain drawings of the invention. Writing an application takes a number of days (the more complicated the invention, the longer it takes!)

Once an application has been filed, the examiners at the patent office have to determine whether a patent should be granted (allowed) for that invention. They search for documents that show whether another person has already come up with this idea. If they think they have found another document that proves that somebody else had the idea first, they write to me with their objections (reasons why the client’s application should not be granted). Then I would have to read the objections and advise the client what to do next. Usually, this means that I have to decide how to argue against the objections.

I have many different clients with applications at different stages. We call each application a separate case. In a typical day, I might write part of a patent application for one case or respond to objections against one or two cases. I might also use these tasks to help train some of our trainees who are on their way to becoming qualified patent attorneys.

After a patent has been granted, the inventor or applicant can use it to stop other people from using their invention without permission. If a client thinks somebody has copied their invention without permission, I might have to spend some of my day comparing my client’s product with the one that somebody else has made to see if the other person copied it. This could mean comparing drawings and descriptions of each product but sometimes I need to get hands-on and take things apart to see how they are made. Recently I had to take apart three different infrared temperature sensors (like the ones they use to check your temperature without having to touch you) to see whether the internal workings were the same. As it turned out, there were some differences so I could tell my client that they hadn’t been copied.

One of the best things about my job in my opinion is the variety of work that I do. I get to read about lots of different types of technology and I also get to do different tasks every day so that no two days are ever the same.