While women in STEM was the key theme for World Intellectual Property Day earlier this year, it is part of a long-term strategy at HGF, an intellectual property specialist firm with a clear focus on peer support for women.
Intellectual property specialists don’t come much bigger than HGF, with 16 offices across the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands and Switzerland. With one of the UK’s largest teams of specialist life science attorneys, HGF provides clients with practical, legal and strategic advice on managing their life sciences intellectual property. This extends from protecting new research from the UK’s most prestigious universities, to high-profile oppositions and court proceedings on market leading products.
Its support of women in the workplace is perfectly illustrated by the career path of Patent Attorney and Partner Kate Taylor, who heads up the HGF life sciences team. Kate and her team stand between our great inventors and the people who threaten to exploit their work. Through patents, trademarks, copyright and the protection of industrial design, she and her team play a vital role as guardians of the work of researchers, inventors and manufacturers in the thriving life sciences sector.
The fact that she combines her high-flying role with being a wife and mother of two young children is testimony to the way she has successfully juggled her work/life balance, along with the support she and others receive from HGF, which positively encourages and empowers women in the workplace.
Research carried out last year by the Intellectual Property Office shows that since 1975, there has been a 500% increase in the proportion of patents involving a female inventor and a 400% increase in the number of individual female inventors, but this comes from a low base. There is still a significant gender disparity, with only 0.3% of patents coming from all female teams.
The fields of biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and chemistry show the highest rates of women named as inventors in international patent applications filed via WIPO. Kate, who leads a team of 17 attorneys (11 of them women) in the life sciences arm of HGF, wants to see more women enter into the STEM sector, and for that talent to be nurtured.
“Lots of progress has been made, and the balance is better now than it was,” she said. “More employers need to provide the workplace environment in which women can thrive and more women need to be confident enough to enter into this brilliant field.”
HGF has its own dedicated Women in STEM team which provides access to a network of like-minded individuals, topical advice and resources. The team runs events designed to deliver key news, legal updates and practical advice relating to Intellectual Property and the latest developments in the STEM industries, as well as providing networking opportunities. The team comprises IP solicitors, patent attorneys and trade mark attorneys, with expertise covering chemistry, engineering, electronics and life sciences.
Such is the portfolio of HGF, including the world’s biggest corporations, the most prestigious educational institutions, and Nobel prize-winning innovators, that the company has experts at hand with a wealth of knowledge and insight to share, with an acute understanding of the demands facing women in the STEM industries.
For Kate, based in the York office, it has been a one-employer journey which started 18 years ago when she left the University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne with a BSc in Genetics and a Masters in Biotechnology. By 2009 she was a partner. She admits she would have struggled to balance work and being a mother if it wasn’t for the forward-thinking attitude of her firm.
“I couldn’t combine this job with being a mother if it wasn’t for the way HGF positively encourages and supports women in the workplace,” she said. “I hope I can be an example to others that women and mothers can carve out a brilliant career in science.”
Kate has considerable experience of drafting patent applications and developing IP filing strategies in the life sciences field. She coordinates global patent portfolios for spin out companies and international corporations. Kate has a substantial prosecution practice and is highly experienced in acting before the European Patent Office in prosecution, opposition and appeal matters; fighting on behalf of the clients whose inventions and research she is protecting.
HGF is also currently offering specialist support through the Brexit process, during a period of understandable uncertainty over the protection of Intellectual Property during and after the process. HGF has undertaken considerable scenario planning so that the firm is fully prepared and can devise a strategy for Brexit. As far as HGF are concerned, Brexit means business as usual: providing their clients with the best advice to manage their IP.
Women leading in STEM
Sheila MacNeil has made a huge difference to people’s lives through her ground-breaking life sciences research work – and she is a perfect example of just how much women can achieve in STEM. Sheila is Professor of Tissue Engineering in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Sheffield.
Her research focuses on developing biomaterials and tissue engineering which will benefit patients, alongside fundamental work to develop new understanding and tools in the area of tissue engineering. She has filed patent applications across the globe with the support of HGF in order to protect her technology.
MacNeil’s group has a long history of working with clinical NHS colleagues using tissue engineered skin to benefit burns patients (from 1992) and more recently patients with chronic ulcers (from 2004) and for patients requiring reconstructive surgery of the urethra (from 2007).
She developed the product Myskin™ (a combination of a biomaterial and patient’s skin cells) which was clinically evaluated and developed commercially and has been available in the UK for patients with extensive skin loss due to burns injuries and for patients with chronic non-healing ulcers. This product, available from 2004 to the current time, is currently available through the company Regenerys Ltd.
Additionally, she has developed 3D tissue engineered models used to study a wide range of normal and abnormal conditions spanning wound healing, skin contracture, pigmentation, melanoma invasion, angiogenesis, bacterial infection and skin sensitisation.
Sheila's current projects include developing tissue engineering approaches for reconstruction for burns contractures and using human fat to improve the clinical outcome post grafting of patients who have suffered severe burns.
Her recent patents involve developing new biomaterial approaches to stimulate healing in chronic ulcers (protected by a joint patent filing with colleagues in Pakistan) and she leads a group of scientists and clinicians developing a tissue engineering approach for repair of the weakened tissues of the female pelvic floor - protected by a patent now licensed for translation to the clinic by a new company Symimetic Ltd.
She has also worked with clinical colleagues in India through two projects funded by the Wellcome Trust which has led to a simplification of the current approach to corneal regeneration and to a new methodology to improve early detection of infection in the cornea - projects funded by the Wellcome Trust and protected by patents filed by HGF.
Visit HGF or email for more information.
This article appeared in FutureNorth's 'Life Sciences Edition' in The Times, 26 June 2018. See more online here and download a PDF here.