Caitlin Heard
Caitlin is an intellectual property litigator and solicitor advocate specialising in multijurisdictional patent litigation. She has acted on several ground-breaking cases, including one of the earliest cases in the UK dealing with Standard Essential Patents (SEPs) and FRAND licensing. She has considerable experience providing strategic counsel and coordination of international patent litigation strategy.
Caitlin has acted on a number of high profile pharmaceutical and technology disputes across a broad range of industries including telecommunications, information security, mobile banking and ticketing, quantum computing, construction, medical devices, and biotech. Caitlin has represented clients in front of the General Court, Court of Appeal, High Court, IP Enterprise Court and UKIPO.
Caitlin has particular expertise advising clients on their IP strategy in respect of SEPs and FRAND licensing. She has also written academically on this subject, having co-authored a textbook chapter in “Intellectual Property in Electronics and Software” (published by Globe Law and Business), entitled “Standard setting, competition law and FRAND licensing in Europe”.
She is equally well placed to advise clients in the life sciences sector, where she has acted for clients on product launch strategy and regulatory exclusivity, and has experience providing strategic advice to challenge decisions of regulatory bodies including the MHRA and EMA.
Caitlin is ranked as a “Next Generation Partner” in the 2020 Legal 500 for Intellectual Property: Patents. She is also recognised as an ‘IP Trailblazer’ in World Intellectual Property Review’s Influential Women in IP 2020, and sits on the editorial board of the Patent Lawyer Magazine.
Practice Area
Panel
- Contributing Author
Qualified Year
- 2011
Membership
- AIPPI
- EPLaw
- IPLA
- ChIPs
Qualifications
- Higher Courts (Civil) Rights of Audience (2015)
- Postgraduate Diploma in Intellectual Property Law and Practice (2012)
- Postgraduate Diploma in Legal Practice (2010)
- Bachelor of Law LLB (2007)
Education
- BPP Professional Education, London (2014)
- Oxford University, Oxford (2012)
- BPP Law School, London (2009)
- University of Essex, Colchester (2007)
1 Contributions by Caitlin Heard
PRACTICE NOTES
AI and IP: UK and EU law on training data, text and data mining, algorithms, system protection, AI outputs, authorship/inventorship, infringement and licensing
This Practice Note sets out to clarify and explore the relationship between artificial intelligence (AI) (or machine learning) and IP.
What is artificial intelligence?
‘Artificial intelligence’ describes a field of computing where machines are built to imitate human intellect - the capacities to perceive, analyse, learn, reason and draw inferences. AI has progressed from its 1950s origins to today’s highly adaptable and unprecedented form. Early thinking centred on systems encoded by developers with the know-how of human specialists, producing intricate decision trees that allowed non-experts to reach a desired outcome. A notable early instance was the Deep Blue system, engineered to trawl a data bank of possible chess moves, compiled by grandmasters, and, using the current board position, assess options and choose its next move. In more recent usage, ‘AI’ commonly refers to machine learning, where computers adjust and improve through exposure to data they encounter or are supplied. ‘Machine learning’ means learning from examples rather than having rules laid down by a...
IP
If you expected to see yourself on this page, click here.
