Ian Whiley

Ian enjoys working closely with his clients to understand the commercial objectives and considerations involved with a patent application to ensure that their patents are high quality, commercially relevant tools.

He has considerable experience in prosecuting patent applications in many key jurisdictions around the world including the US, China, Japan, South Korea and Europe. This includes managing prosecution of families of patent applications across many different jurisdictions, maintaining consistency across the family while addressing carefully the different and varied jurisdictional specific issues.

In particular, Ian has worked extensively in the prosecution of European patents, regularly discussing his clients’ patent applications with European examiners. Ian also has substantial experience in attending oral proceedings at the European Patent Office. During his time with Swindell and Pearson, Ian has been responsible for monitoring and reporting on changes in patent law in the UK, Europe, the US, China, Japan and South Korea.

Prior to training as a patent attorney, Ian graduated from the University of Nottingham with a first class MSci degree in physics and astronomy before undertaking a PhD in astronomy at the same university. As part of his studies, Ian travelled to countries including France, Spain, Germany, Hungary and the Canary Islands.

Outside of work Ian enjoys spending time with his family and unusually large labrador, Sherlock. Ian enjoys watching most sports and plays squash and badminton when he can find the time. Ian also enjoys playing board games and is always looking for new games to try out.  Due to having two sons in secondary school, Ian has also learnt more about Minecraft than he would care to admit.