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With keen interests in transport and environmentally friendly innovations, Rick enjoys maximising the value of his clients’ intellectual property to help them secure investments, achieve their business goals and deliver a more sustainable future.
Recognised personally in various well-respected league tables, Rick leads our mechanical and heavy engineering practice group, EIP Dynamics, which has been ranked Gold every year since the Financial Times’ list of “Europe’s Leading Patent Law Firms” began. He has extensive private practice experience advising on patent and registered design matters for clients from startups to multinationals, and in-house experience from secondment roles involving due diligence work in investment rounds, capturing innovations and assessing whether to protect them with patents, registered designs or trade secrets, and keeping abreast of technical and commercial developments to inform our wider teams’ work for the relevant clients. This combination enables him to provide commercially focussed, pragmatic advice, and he has been invited by the UK’s Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys (CIPA) to speak about his work in podcast and video episodes.
Since entering the patent profession in 2004, Rick has developed considerable expertise in invention harvesting and patent drafting. He has written 100s of patent applications relating to mechanical, electromechanical and manufacturing technologies for clients in industries such as aerospace, marine, transport & logistics, consumer electronics, FMCG, packaging, printing, medical devices and electromagnetic energy harvesters. He is also adept at efficiently managing prosecution of multijurisdictional patent families, and has done so in these technology areas as well as automotive, micromobility, sustainable fuel systems, railway infrastructure, and snack food manufacture. He also advises on patent infringement & validity and freedom-to-operate matters.
Rick is also head of the EIP Designs group, which has prepared, filed and prosecuted design applications for various physical products, GUIs, logos and room interiors. In 2015, he was invited to contribute, on an ongoing basis, to the CITMA & CIPA Community Designs Handbook, which is a valuable reference for IP attorneys.
Experience
- Securing grant of UK patent rights that will enable the UK owners to benefit from corporate tax relief on worldwide profits under the Patent Box scheme
- Coordinating the drafting and concurrent first-filing of a batch of more than 50 patent applications relating to a commercially highly-important consumer product for a FTSE 100 client
- Defending a granted European patent from opposition while retaining a scope of protection considered to cover a competitor’s product
- In-house secondment work at a FTSE 100 company, including managing patent and design portfolios relating to consumer products, packaging and manufacturing machinery, determining patent filing strategies in view of the company's and competitors’ operations, budget limitations and regulatory constraints, collaborating with R&D teams and strategizing how best to protect their innovations, instructing outside counsel and critiquing their work, and helping to develop governance procedures.
- Harvesting innovations and preparing and filing patent and registered design applications to protect key assets of a young UK-based PLC
- Drafting dozens of patent applications relating to personal care products and packaging, in crowded technical fields
- Providing freedom-to-operate advice in view of registered designs relating to personal care products and packaging
Recent work
- Managing EIP’s work for our sustainable packaging client Pulpex, including coordinating work done by our team of patent attorneys, and part-time secondment with two colleagues to provide an in-house IP function that advises the C-suite and R&D team on all matters relating to IP.
- Overseeing FTO advice given to various clients regarding, e.g., gym equipment and magnetic door locks.
- Coordinating patent landscape search work to help a client understand the status of, and key players in, a particular technology sector and identify “white space” to which innovation work could be targeted.
- Assisting with IP audits for a startup working on air purifying hardware for transport, and an established company that makes attachments for excavators.
- Ongoing drafting and prosecution of patent applications for a global transport & logistics company.
- Ongoing drafting and prosecution of patent applications for a multinational commercial aircraft manufacturer.
Published articles
- June 2022
Startups Magazine, IP considerations arising from increased micro mobility competition (link) - April 2022
The Times, Innovation will finally get electric cars on our roads (link) - December 2021
Plant Planet, Agtech: Protecting your intellectual property in the field - November 2021
Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Internal combustion engines could play a part in decarbonisation – here’s how (link) - July 2021
Newsflash, How could internal combustion engines help drive decarbonisation? (link) - 2015 to present
The CITMA & CIPA Community Designs Handbook published by Sweet & Maxwell, regular updates to Chapter 3: “Making a Registered Community Design Application”
Specialisms
- Digital
- Dynamics
- HealthTech
Education
Rick has a strong background and interest in mechanical engineering. He is an Associate Member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (AMIMechE). During his Master’s degree, he specialised in automotive engineering and was an active member of his university’s Formula Student motor racing team, which designed, built and competed a single-seat racing car.
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2005 — 2006
Certificate in Intellectual Property Law, Queen Mary College, University of London -
1999 — 2003
MEng Mechanical Engineering, University of Birmingham
Career history
- 2014 — present
Partner, EIP - 2013 — 2014
Partner, Page White & Farrer - 2007 — 2013
Patent Attorney, Page White & Farrer - 2004 — 2007
Patent Assistant, Mewburn Ellis LLP
Awards and recognition
- Legal 500 2024 (link)
- IAM Patent 1000 2024: “Working with Richard is always a very positive experience. He provides well-balanced, commercial advice when considering which path forward to take. He understands his patrons’ business strategy, competition and needs, and is embedded as a key member of their team.” (link)
- WIPR Leader 2023, Patent Leaders, United Kingdom
- IAM Patent 1000, 2023. 'Engineer Richard Gordon-Brown also boasts deep technical insight and knows how to see things from a client’s point of view.'
- Legal 500, 2023 (link)
- WIPR Leaders 2022, Patent Leader, United Kingdom (link)
- Legal 500, 2022
- Legal 500, 2021
- Legal 500, 2020
Speaking engagements
- April 2024
Featured in CIPA’s video , "How patents are helping us move beyond plastic packaging" (link) - July 2023
Interviewed with our client in CIPA’s , "Two IPs in a Pod” podcast episode, “The Earthshot Series – Pulpex: the future of sustainable packaging" (link) - July 2021
EntreConf, What Entrepreneurs Need to Know About Patents - November 2015
Niche Vehicle Network Annual Members' Forum, Protecting Innovation - March 2015
EIP Seminar, Effective Innovation Planning