Alan MacDougall

Alan’s principal practice areas include strategic IP advice, portfolio management and patent drafting and prosecution. He also has expertise in both opposition and appeal proceedings before the European Patent Office. Alan has detailed knowledge of networking and communications technologies, including specialist knowledge of mobile telecommunications standards and advises on essentiality and licensing activity in this area. He also has extensive knowledge of robotics, control systems, navigation and routing systems, and sensing devices, such as inductive and capacitive sensors used in the automotive and computer fields. Alan also advises extensively on software and business method related inventions, particularly in the financial services sector.

Alan has a first class honours degree in electrical and electronic engineering as well as a master’s degree in communications, digital signal processing and control from Strathclyde University. He qualified as a European patent attorney in 1997.

Alan has recently won a number of important EPO opposition and appeal cases; including an appeal for a UK-based client relating to position sensing technology used in the industrial and automotive fields. He won the case both at the opposition and at the appeal stage, with the patent as granted being held valid with a minor amendment to a dependent claim. Alan has also recently won three complex opposition cases relating to robotic medical device technology.  In one of the cases the patent as granted was found to be valid and no appeal was filed by the opponent.  

Alan is a member of the International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property (AIPPI) and regularly attends the APAA meetings as an observer.