As a result of last month’s “job ad” article, our team has grown. We now have the right team size to produce content and perform litigation research. For the avoidance of doubt, we are still happy to accept guest articles from great authors who have something interesting to share.
These days, some have noticed a name they remember from a decade ago. But let me introduce my fellow contributors in the order in which they joined:
Olivia Rafferty joined in December 2024 with a mission that I described as doing the things that real journalists do and that a litigation nerd like me is not really good at. She formerly covered IP developments in the Asia-Pacific region from Hong Kong SAR for IAM, after reporting on competition law, policy, and enforcement (and related developments) in London for GCR. She was also previously the assistant editor for an online magazine, has been (and will continue to be) published by various publications with a non-legal focus, and holds a degree in journalism from City, University of London. Olivia has attended Unified Patent Court (UPC) hearings in Milan and Paris. She is now helping our new team members with their editorial onboarding and will continue to help coordinate editorial matters.
Anushka Sharma is soon going to be an Indian advocate and, in May 2025, started to support our litigation analysis and UPC monitoring. Anushka is finishing her studies at SVKM’s Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies in Indore. For almost a year, she has been handling our UPC Roundups and more. She will soon attend some UPC hearings. Anushka has read (partly based on machine translations) more than a third of all published UPC decisions in history and a number of others that were harder to find.
Merve Sağlam, the first to join us among those who responded to the March article, is a Turkish-qualified attorney who has practiced law, which includes hands-on experience with litigation. She graduated from Izmir University of Economics and holds an LL.M. from the University of East Anglia (Norwich, UK), where she wrote her thesis about a standard-essential patent topic. Merve also knows about long-arm jurisdiction issues in patent law. Her writing is not confined to those fields, but Merve is definitely taking a strong interest in SEPs and cross-border enforcement. You may see her at some UPC hearings in the future.
Mehnaz Khatoon is a B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) graduate from Aligarh Muslim University, India, and a qualified Advocate. She has worked as a Legal Researcher with the DPIIT IPR Chair (CSRIPR–NUSRL Ranchi), where she conducted in-depth research on complex IP issues. One of her research articles—on patents relating to nanoparticle-based cancer treatment—was selected for a book. Additionally, Mehnaz has authored multiple analytical articles published on platforms such as SpicyIP (India’s leading IP blog) and The IP Press.
Jack Ellis was an editor and reporter at IAM from 2010 to 2017, first in London, later in Hong Kong. After other endeavors related to journalism and (industry-specific) IP, Jack is now our correspondent for the Americas, Japan, and South Korea. He is based in Vancouver, Canada, and looking forward to reconnecting with many old acquaintances.
We receive additional help from professionals with UPC monitoring; also, Jared Cho will occasionally write about the Chinese patent litigation landscape; and outside the editorial field, those who have been in contact with us about our subscriptions and law firm profiles know they receive friendly and competent service.
I hope to be able to work with this great team for as long as possible, and as successfully as possible. The recent “job ad” article has arguably been the most valuable article for our own purposes to date.
No one was chosen for any ideological agenda. As a result of meritocracy, this has become a fairly diverse group. If all the right candidates had been of one ethnicity, gender, or religion, I wouldn’t have had a problem with it either. By coincidence, four of us live on the Mediterranean coast, which is why I once described us as a “Club Med”.
What does help is that we speak many different languages, including but not limited to those in which all UPC proceedings (at least the ones we’ve looked at so far) are conducted, and two of those have a decent reading comprehension of Portuguese. Advances in machine translation are not a substitute for being able to read the original documents or to listen to court hearings.