Standards, Patents and Competitiveness Forum

Alexander Haertel
Cluster Lead Patents, Deutsche Telekom

Alexander joined Deutsche Telekom as the head of patents in 2022, after 18 years of extensive patent litigation experience as an attorney-at-law. His role encompasses any patent related licensing and patent policy issues, and he is responsible for all patent related litigation and prosecution. Alexander has conducted hundreds of cases before all major German courts, with a special emphasis on cross-border disputes in the telecommunication and automotive sector. He is an active lecturer, publishes regularly on patent law and is an author of an upcoming commentary on the Unified Patent Court. He is co-chair of the Licensing Executive Society’s European Committee and a member of the Dispute Resolution Committee.

Axel Ferrazzini
Managing Director, 4iP Council

Axel is Managing Director of 4iP Council, a European research organisation that promotes the role of intellectual property in innovation. With a background in technology research, standardisation, governance and policy development, he serves on the ETSI board and is an expert in intellectual property rights. As a leading IP strategist in deep tech, Axel frequently speaks and moderates on topics intersecting technology, standardisation and market competitiveness.

Bowman Heiden
Director of the Center for Intellectual Property (CIP), University of Gothenburg

Bowman is the executive director at the Tusher Strategic Initiative for Technology Leadership at UC-Berkeley, the director of the Center for Intellectual Property at the University of Gothenburg and a fellow of the Classical Liberal Institute at New York University School of Law. His research is at the interdisciplinary interface of IP, innovation, competition and geopolitics.

Claudia MacMaster 
Head of Legal and Compliance, International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 

An attorney-at-law and published author, Claudia joined the IEC in 2020 to create its first in-house legal service. After beginning her legal career over two decades ago at a boutique law firm in Miami, she worked at various law firms and an administrative court in the United States before joining the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center in Geneva. She later worked at a Swiss law firm and at ISO, IEC’s sister organisation

Joana Piriquito Santos
Founding and Managing Partner, NLP Law Firm

Joana is a lawyer, pharmacist and Portuguese Patent and Trademark Attorney who has been working in IP since 2010, including as a patent examiner. She now represents pharmaceutical and technology companies before national courts and the UPC. She also advises on technology transfer and transactions. Joana is on the PMAC list of neutrals and is President of UNION-IP’s Patents Commission and a is member of the EPO’s SACEPO Working Party on Guidelines.

Juliane Kotzur 
Lawyer, EPO’s Observatory on Patents and Technology

Since joining the EPO in 2022, Juliane has been working in patent law policy with a particular focus on standard essential patents and the Unitary Patent system. She has been closely involved in the EPO’s work supporting the establishment and development of the PMAC and currently serves as an external expert in the Centre’s FRAND Guidelines Working Group. Juliane is a fully qualified German lawyer and holds a PhD in intellectual property law.

Justus Baron
Research Director, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, Founder and CEO of BRELA and FRANDLY

Justus oversees the empirical research agenda of BRELA, a data and analytics platform that supports parties in SEP licensing negotiations, and also founded FRANDLY, is a licensing intelligence tool that provides FRAND royalty price estimates and benchmarks. His work focuses on empirical research and consulting at the intersection of economics, law, technology and standardisation. He has served on the European Commission’s SEPs Expert Group and led a consortium supporting its impact assessment of the proposed SEP regulation. He regularly provides expert analysis on SEP/FRAND licensing, royalty determination, patent valuation and technology standards.

Martin Chatel 
Chief Policy Officer, ETSI

Martin oversees ETSI's international co-operation projects and partnerships, leading ETSI’s strategic engagement with European institutions, CEPT, global SDOs, governments and key stakeholders. Drawing on his extensive experience in government affairs, policy advocacy, technology regulation, patents and intellectual property, he contributes to strengthening ETSI’s strategic positioning. Martin holds degrees from Sciences Po Paris and the Brussels Institute of European Studies.

Matteo Sabattini
Executive Head of Government Affairs, Sisvel

Matteo previously served as President and Chief Licensing Officer at Convida, a joint venture between InterDigital and Sony Corporation of America. Prior to that, he was Director of IP Policy at Ericsson, CTO of the Sisvel Group and President and CEO of Sisvel Technology. Matteo has published extensively on IP matters and holds an MBA from George Washington University, a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of California San Diego, and a Master's in electrical engineering from the University of Bologna. He is a member of the board of the Licensing Executive Society International (LESI), an IEEE Senior Member, a Beta Gamma Sigma lifetime member and a member of the MIT Enterprise Forum.

Michael Fröhlich
Director of Patent Developments and IP Lab, European Patent Office

Michael leads a team responsible for developing policy solutions on the international and European legal framework for patents and related areas of law and practice. This includes the development of legal policy in relation to the Unitary Patent, new emerging technologies, patent law trends and the harmonisation of patent law and practices. As a German lawyer with over 25 years of experience working in IP, he previously held the roles of Senior Director of EU IP & Strategy at BlackBerry, Senior Legal Counsel at Nokia and Head of Legal Affairs at the European Telecommunications Standards Institute. He has served for many years as the Chairman of the AIPPI Committee on Patents & Standards, as well as the Vice-Chairman of the GSMA IPR Working Group and Vice-Chairman of the LES Publication Committee.

Pere Arque-Castells
Stream Lead Legal and Innovation Policies, EPO's Observatory on Patents and Technology

As an economist specialised in innovation, Pere has served as an assistant professor in the Innovation Management and Strategy department at the University of Groningen, as a research associate at Northwestern University's Pritzker School of Law and as a postdoctoral researcher at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Pere holds an MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics and a PhD in Economics from the Universitat de Barcelona. His research on innovation economics has been featured in numerous peer-reviewed journals.

Shahrokh Nayeb Nazar
VP of Technology, Head of Patent Assertion & Portfolio Analysis, Qualcomm

Shahrokh leads patent assertion and portfolio analysis at Qualcomm Technology Licensing. His team is responsible for developing the company's global patent assertion and enforcement strategy, providing detailed technical analysis of third-party portfolios and conducting technical discussions during the negotiation of global patent license agreements.

Simon Dack
Expert Committee, Patent Mediation and Arbitration Centre

Simon is a retired patent litigator who serves on the PMAC Expert Committee. He is Chair of the FRAND Guidelines Working Group, regularly advises on litigation strategy and trial preparation, and frequently serves as a judge in mock UPC trials. He began his career at the EPO before qualifying as a European patent attorney and being called to the English bar. With a litigation focus on pharmaceuticals, biotechnology and medical devices, he made partner at De Brauw before becoming a founding partner of Hoyng ROKH Monegier. He previously lectured on IP law at Leiden University and served as the IP bar representative for the Dutch Orde van Advocaten as well as on the expert advisory board for a Dutch government think-tank.

Steve Faraji
Head of Litigation, Standards, Volkswagen AG

Steve is a qualified German and European Patent Attorney specialising in SEPs and computer implemented inventions. Prior to joining Volkswagen, he worked at AUDI AG as Head of Patents Vehicle/Production and Chief IPR Policy Manager. Before that he worked on the prosecution and litigation of ICT patents for a major patent law firm in Munich.

Thomas Dreiser
Chief IP Litigation Counsel (EMEA), Huawei

Thomas is responsible for Huawei’s EMEA patent litigation and licensing projects, with a focus on standard essential patents in the telecommunications sector and FRAND-related issues. Prior to joining Huawei, he worked as an external attorney specialising in patent litigation, IP and IT law. Among other cases, he represented a company in one of the largest German SEP litigation campaigns in the telecommunications sector in recent years. With more than 15 years of professional experience in the field of IP and patent law, Thomas holds law degrees from the Universities of Munich, Duesseldorf and Jena. He also teaches IP law at the University of Weimar.