Andy joined Miller Sturt Kenyon in 1998 and is qualified as a Patent Attorney Litigator, European Patent Attorney and a Chartered Patent Attorney.  He has been Managing Director since 2004.

As well as handling day-to-day prosecution before the EPO and the UKIPO, Andy is experienced in contentious work, including litigation in Europe (in particular in the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland) and the US.  He acts for clients before the EPO Boards of Appeal, in addition to Opposition and Examining Divisions, and was involved in the well-known Enlarged Board of Appeal decision G1/06 relating to the filing of divisional applications, in which we successfully represented our client.  He also undertakes due diligence and provides strategy advice to clients.

Andy’s experience includes four years with the UK Atomic Energy Authority, which sponsored him through university and provided him with first hand experience of nuclear reactor shutdown and testing, mechanical and civil design engineering to the most demanding requirements, and experimental work in recovery of oil from geological structures.  Before joining the firm, Andy worked as a senior searcher for RWS Information Ltd and then founded his own IP research business, which included clients such as RWS and Edgeworth King & Co. He has also lived in South Africa, where he worked for Spoor & Fisher, a leading firm of patent attorneys.

Andy handles a wide variety of primarily electrical and mechanical subject matter.  He has worked on pumps and compressors; medical devices; mobile device technology; display devices and touch screens; sensing devices; music synthesisers; electrical circuit design; software; signal, data and image processing and encoding; semiconductors; solid state memories and disk drives; and printers and consumables.

Andy has lectured extensively in the UK, Europe (including France and Germany) and Japan, covering various aspects of UK and European intellectual property law.  Andy has trained several attorneys within the firm and has given seminars for trainee attorneys at other firms.