A senior partner in private practice

Author: Bruce Alexander

Bruce Alexander is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys and the current President. He is a partner in Boult Wade Tennant, formerly managing partner, and practises as both a patent attorney and a trade mark attorney, across a wide range of industrial and commercial sectors.

As usual, I am writing this much later than I intended and right up against a deadline - a normal state for patent attorneys who are always working to deadlines and are quite used to producing their written work at the last moment, and often during a grace period after the last moment!

During my last year at university, I visited the University Careers Service and then I became a patent agent. Sadly, the two events were unconnected. Like so many others at that time, the Careers Service knew little about the professions of patent and trade mark agent and I stumbled into them by accident - to be precise, leaning on the bar at a golf club where I met a man who subsequently became my Senior Partner. He told me what patent agents do and his description seemed to embrace my interests exactly. So I gave it a try and 30 years later I still enjoy my chosen career immensely.

Thirty years may sound a long time to do the same job but I have found endless variety in my professional career. As a reasonably senior partner in private practice, my job has varied considerably over the years and the changes have enabled me to learn a lot of new skills and to apply them in different ways. There are three main elements to my professional career nowadays, running a busy patent and trade mark practice, being a partner of a major firm and therefore being involved in running that business, and being President of the Chartered Institute of Patent Agents.

Like many others in our profession, I practise as both a patent and a trade mark attorney (impolitely referred to in my firm as a 'hybrid'). As a hybrid I am part of one of the patent groups in my firm and of the trade mark group and I work with a number of assistants, some specialising in patents and some in trade marks. These days, hybrids are becoming rarer and most practitioners specialise in either patents or trade marks. The single most important factor that has made it such an enjoyable job over the years is the infinite variety. I arrive at the office each morning with some idea of what I plan to do that day but, more often than not, those plans are changed as the morning faxes and e-mails bring new problems requiring urgent attention.

My clients range from major corporations to private individuals and they all have different needs, particularly as I do a mix of patent and trade mark work. As such there is no typical day. For example, during an annual major tennis event, street traders are selling T-shirts and other merchandise with a copy of one of the event's trade marks. A burst of activity leads to the T-shirts being seized by Trading Standards Officers. A phone call from a client tells you they are planning to acquire another company in their field and asks you to confirm what patents the competitor owns and how these might affect your client's activities. Another client is planning to license their well-known trade mark for use on a range of merchandise as a lifestyle brand. A review of their existing trade mark rights is needed in order to see if they are adequately protected before they finalise any licence deals.

My original degree was in engineering but, whilst my basic engineering knowledge has always been useful, my expertise has developed in certain areas through working with clients with interests in those areas. An essential attribute of our profession is being able to absorb information quickly to understand what the clients have developed - even sometimes to suggest that what they have developed might not work!

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