Alison Brimelow CBEPresident |
Alison Brimelow took office as President of the European Patent Office on 1 July 2007.
Before that, she had pursued a varied career in the civil service, including experience of intellectual property at national, European and international levels.
She joined the British Diplomatic Service in 1973 and later transferred to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), where she worked in a variety of positions at Headquarters, mostly concerned with policy in the EU. In 1991 she joined the UK Patent Office (now the UK Intellectual Property Office), where she became head of the Trade Marks Registry.
In 1997 she returned to DTI Headquarters to work on European and international competition policy.
In March 1999 Alison Brimelow was appointed Chief Executive and Comptroller General of the UK Patent Office, a position she held until December 2003.
From 1999 to 2003 she headed the UK delegation on the Administrative Council of the European Patent Organisation. In 2003 she was elected President of the European Patent Office jointly with Professor Alain Pompidou, whose term of office ended in June 2007. She resigned from the UK Civil Service on 31 December 2003, but remained part of the UK delegation on the Administrative Council, and was the Council's Deputy Chair from December 2003 to 2006. From November 2004 to December 2006 Alison Brimelow chaired the Steering Board of the National Weights and Measures Laboratory. In February 2005 she was elected Associate Fellow of Templeton College in Oxford University's Saïd Business School. Alison Brimelow was born in 1949. She holds a degree from the University of East Anglia. In September 2007 she received an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from the University of Wolverhampton, for services to intellectual property. In 2005, she was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).
Abstract of Ms Brimelow's speech
The challenges of the patent system in times of global recession - innovation as the way out of the current economic crisis?
The workload of patent offices has grown to an extent that the global patent system is burdened with significant backlogs despite the current recession. This has adversely affected the ability of the IP authorities to deliver services and products in a timely manner whilst maintaining high qualitative standards. The improvement of quality and efficiency remains a key challenge. The interdependence between market regions necessitates enhanced cooperation between the world's IP authorities in order to target redundancies, improve the efficiency of the grant process and safeguard the economic sustainability of a patent system fostering investment and innovation in the long term.
