She has broad experience in intellectual property law, including in-house experience managing IP teams in the automotive and IT sectors, coupled with extensive private practice experience, both in a traditional European patent prosecution firm and latterly as part of a litigation team in one of France’s first combined attorney-at-law and patent attorney firms.

Her experience particularly covers drafting and prosecuting patent applications, enforcing patent rights, managing and auditing patent portfolios, freedom-to-operate opinions, litigation in relation to patent infringement and validity, including opposition and appeal proceedings at the European Patent Office, and IP-related contracts.

Her technical fields of expertise include computer science, information technology, encryption, telecoms, smart cards, medical devices, automotive and aeronautics as well as mechanical inventions.

Marie-Claude is a tutor for Paper C of the European Qualification Examination within the French Association of Industrial Property Experts (Association Française des Spécialistes en Propriété Industrielle de l’Industrie – ASPI). She is also a member of the Licencing Executives Society, the Association of European Patent Practitioners (Association des Praticiens Européens des Brevets – APEB) and the International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property (Association Internationale pour la Protection de la Propriété Intellectuelle – AIPPI), whose events she regularly attends.

Education & background

Marie-Claude studied Computer Science to obtain a PhD at the National Institute of Polytechnics in Grenoble, France (Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble).

Marie-Claude then gained industry experience as a research engineer in the field of smart cards, during which she discovered the world of patents as an inventor.

She joined the patent profession in 2001. She has been a qualified French and European patent attorney since 2006. She has since held various positions in several large and well-known technology companies, as well as in an IP firm and in a firm of attorneys-at-law.

In parallel, she obtained the University Diploma “Patent Litigation in Europe”, a professional degree from the CEIPI in Trademarks and Industrial Designs and a Master 2 degree in law, economics, management with a specialisation in industrial property law, from the University of Strasbourg, France.

In March 2023, she was registered as a representative before the new Unified Patent Court, one of the first European patent attorneys to be entered on the list of UPC representatives.

Yannick is a qualified French and European patent attorney. His background includes more than 10 years of patent portfolio management, IP-related risk mitigation, budgeting, cost, process and change management, having held several key positions within Airbus and Safran groups.

Education & background

Prior to joining Withers & Rogers, Yannick held several IP management positions at Airbus, where he was ultimately responsible for patent portfolio optimisation. Yannick also led in-house patent operations at Safran Aircraft Engines for 5 years, where he managed a patent portfolio of 10,000+ filings, covering 3,000+ inventions. Among his key successes were the management of the transition to an Airbus-wide IP management system and the alignment of Safran’s patent portfolio to its innovation strategy.

Passionate about intellectual property, Yannick has spent the past 5 years developing new IP services, quality management, legal knowledge management and a worldwide attorney network at a leading service provider in the IP field, helping the company triple its headcount from 50 to 150 employees during his tenure.

Yannick is a qualified (Black Belt) Lean Six Sigma expert and is regularly consulted to support Lean IP management deployment across the IP sector. From 2009 to 2014, he was Secretary of the French association of in-house IP counsels (ASPI). He was elected again in early 2021 before moving to private practice at Withers & Rogers. He has been Secretary of the European Patent Institute (epi) Online Communications Committee since 2017 and is the current epi representative at the Standard Advisory Committee to the EPO (SACEPO) e-patent process working group. Yannick is also involved in the association for IP Data Exchange Standards (EDIPI), pushing for more efficient exchanges between IP stakeholders, as well as the International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property (AIPPI) and the Rhône-Alpes Group for the Protection of Intellectual Property (GRAPI).

Yannick holds a BSc in aerospace engineering from the Florida Institute of Technology and a master’s in innovation and technology management from Toulouse Business School. He has been continuously trained in people and project management within Airbus and Safran. He is a regular speaker at worldwide IP conferences and a former epi-CEIPI tutor. Yannick is also a former teacher in IP law and IP management at Skema Business School in Paris, Toulouse Business School and IAE Toulouse.

Russell is a qualified British, French and European Patent Attorney and head of our French Office. In addition to his broad experience in private practice dealing with patent and design prosecution and Freedom to Operate (FTO) advice, Russell also gained in-house experience on a year-long part-time secondment to a multinational consumer product company based in Geneva.

Russell has particular experience in technology areas including structures for electric machines and their control, medical instruments, automotive, aerospace, oil exploration and extraction, packaging and manufacturing technology, as well as computer implemented control systems and graphical user interfaces.

Education & background

Russell studied Manufacturing Engineering and Management with French at the University of Bath, including a year in industry working for Delphi Automotive Systems in Paris, France, and completing a research project at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Electricité et de Mécanique (ENSEM) in Nancy, France, where he developed digital imaging analysis tools to analyse turbulent mixing flows for the modelling of the dispersion of pollutants in cities. He graduated in 2002 with a Master’s degree in Engineering.

Following graduation, Russell trained in Broadcast Engineering Project Management at the BBC, gaining the BBC Eng qualification and managing a key part of the first UK public service High Definition TV channel.

Russell joined the patent profession in 2007. He is a qualified European patent attorney, Chartered British Patent Attorney, and French Patent Attorney. Russell joined Withers & Rogers in 2013. In March 2023, he was registered as a representative before the new Unified Patent Court, one of the first European patent attorneys to be entered on the list of UPC representatives.