Sean Leach

Sean specialises in drafting patent applications for international practice and prosecuting those applications to grant in key jurisdictions including the EPO, the USA, and the UK. He has extensive experience of dealing with the exclusions from patentability of computer programs, mathematical methods, methods of diagnosis, and methods of treatment by surgery and therapy. In addition, his practice also includes: portfolio management; advice on product clearance, infringement and validity; and EPO oppositions and appeals.

Sean’s technical expertise includes electronics, including RF and analogue electronics and display and sensor design; integrated circuit architecture and manufacture, including photonics for classical and quantum optical processing; optical data processing methods; interferometers and photonic integrated circuits; medical devices including catheters endoscopes and prosthetic implants such as valves, stents, grafts, filters and shunts; signal processing; network communications; quantum computing including photon source designs and protocols for generating photonic resource states; technologies; computer implemented inventions including machine learning. Sean also has long experience of instrumentation physics, analytical and metrological devices including spectrometry, interferometry, and surface contact metrology.

In addition to patent drafting and IP strategy, Sean also advises on negotiation of IP licences and IP agreements, and has successfully represented SME clients in licence negotiations with Tier 1 automotive manufacturers and Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs).

Sean holds a master’s degree and a PhD in physics, both from the University of Nottingham. His doctorate related to MRI of the human brain and included work relating to RF and gradient sequences, passive and dynamic shimming, signal sampling schemes, and associated advanced digital signal processing (ICA/PCA, multivariate statistics, recursive time series analysis, and wavelet methods). This work also involved procedural and object oriented programming for data analysis and for data acquisition and control.