Our network
All of our events are only possible because of our network of speakers, advisors, partners and attendees who continue to help develop and inform our series, ensuring that we remain the industry's most premier and relevant innovation series.
Read more about the Kisaco Research Legal community below
Legal Advisory Board
The Legal Advisory Board is a prestigious group of individuals with extensive experience in the legal industry. This group is responsible for guiding the production and development of the Kisaco Research Legal events.
For enquiries please email [email protected]
Karine Crepin
Karine Crepin is the Vice President, Head of Vaccines Patents at GSK. She holds a Master Degree in Bioengineering (specialising in Biochemistry) and a PhD in molecular Biology. She is also a qualified European and Belgian Patent Attorney.
Before re-joining GSK in her current role, she worked for more than 9 years at Sanofi where she built a global team of more than 40 patent attorneys worldwide responsible for all patent matters relating to Sanofi Biologics including Vaccines and platform aspects, and before that for 15 years at GSK vaccines where she started her patent career.
Karine coordinates a large variety of patent related activities, from the protection of innovation to freedom-to-operate and post-grant administrative and judicial proceedings.
Fredrik Fredh
Fredrik is a qualified European Patent Attorney and experienced international IP strategist. Having completed academic studies of innovation and entrepreneurship processes, as well as IP law and management, he has a good grasp of various intellectual property rights (IPR).
Thanks to his many years as IP professional in the Pharma and Biotech industry, Fredrik has learnt to use this IPR toolbox to pursue his professional passion; maximizing return on investment for innovation.”
Lorenz Kallenbach
Lorenz Kallenbach is a senior corporate patent counsel in the healthcare division of Merck KGaA. He is responsible for defining and executing the IP strategy for innovator projects. Including the assessment of the IP landscape, coordination of worldwide patent litigation, and portfolio development.
Before joining Merck, Lorenz worked in private practice. He is qualified as a German and European patent attorney.
Lorenz studied biochemistry and received a Ph.D. in the field of epigenetics.
Stephan Kutik
Frank Landolt
Frank Landolt is Chief Counsel, Intellectual Property and Legal at Confo Therapeutics, a privately held biopharmaceutical start-up based in Ghent, Belgium specializing in GPCR-targeted therapeutics.
After studying chemistry and law at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, Frank worked for almost ten years on pharmaceutical and biotechnological patents and licensing in private practice in the Netherlands, where his clients included major pharmaceutical companies as well as some of the top biotech firms and research institutions in the Netherlands.
Prior to joining Confo in 2018, Frank worked for fifteen years in Ablynx N.V. (now a wholly owned Sanofi company), where he was a member of the management team and headed an integrated IP and legal group of four lawyers and five patent professionals. At Ablynx, Frank was involved in negotiating Ablynx’s strategic partnerships and licensing deals with AbbVie, Boehringer-Ingelheim, MSD, Merck-Serono, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Sanofi, and Wyeth.
From 2000 to 2004, Frank was director of IP and legal counsel at Devgen N.V. (now part of Syngenta), another Ghent-based biotechnology company, where he was involved in negotiating Devgen’s strategic collaborations with Sumitomo, Monsanto, and DuPont Pioneer.
Frank is a Dutch and European patent attorney and also holds a degree in business law from the University of Antwerp. He is a member of the Dutch association of patent attorneys (where he is a tutor for the professional qualification course), EPI, and LES Benelux (where he is involved in the LES Licensing Course). He is a regular speaker on a range of topics relating to IP and licensing in the (bio)pharmaceutical sector. Frank was named as one of Managing IP’s ‘Corporate IP stars’ for four years in a row (2015-2018).
Mathilde Rauline
Mathilde is a European patent attorney, is qualified as a French patent attorney, and is admitted to the Paris bar.
She is head of Greater Europe patent litigation at Sanofi, after having been a patent litigator in private practice (mostly in the pharmaceutical field), and a patent attorney in the industry (Sanofi, Nestlé).
She has extensive experience in pharmaceutical and life-science patent litigation in France, at the EPO, in Europe, and in Eurasia.
Her expertise also comprises contractual matters, settlements, regulatory aspects, and the SPC regulation.
Featured Speakers
Insight into the market dynamics that are having the greatest impact on an industry is what drives our business and its this understanding that allows us to identify and secure the thought leaders who have a true 'vision' to offer.
Dominic Adair
Rainer Becker
Sven Bostyn
Sara Burghart
Robert Cerwinski
Rob Cerwinski, managing partner, is a seasoned patent litigator and IP strategist with 20+ years of experience at premier U.S. law firms helping international clients launch biopharma products into the highly-competitive U.S. market. Mr. Cerwinski specializes in helping companies devise cost-effective strategies to navigate the complex and intertwined legal, regulatory and financial hurdles that can delay or prevent product launch. His successes in pre-litigation strategy and in the courtroom have driven the launch of 20+ biopharma products in the U.S. and Europe. Mr. Cerwinski holds a Master of Science Degree in molecular biology and has a deep understanding of the science, business and regulation of biopharma product development, manufacture and marketing. Mr. Cerwinski co-founded the industry-leading biosimilars practice at Goodwin Procter LLP and is a recognized global authority on biosimilars. He is Senior Editor of the leading legal treatise in the field, Guide to Biosimilars Litigation and Regulation in the U.S. (published by Thomson-Reuters) and founded Goodwin’s award-winning biosimilars blog, Big Molecule Watch and its companion blog, Big Molecule Watch China. Mr. Cerwinski was named an IAM Global Leader in Intellectual Property Law in 2021 and is ranked in the Gold Tier of the IAM Patent 1000.
Brian Coggio
Liz Cohen
Katie Coltart
Kristin Cooklin
Mike Cottler
Jenny Davies
Ricardo Dijkstra
Robin Ellis
Jules Fabre
Fredrik Fredh
Fredrik is a qualified European Patent Attorney and experienced international IP strategist. Having completed academic studies of innovation and entrepreneurship processes, as well as IP law and management, he has a good grasp of various intellectual property rights (IPR).
Thanks to his many years as IP professional in the Pharma and Biotech industry, Fredrik has learnt to use this IPR toolbox to pursue his professional passion; maximizing return on investment for innovation.”
Katherine A. Helm
Matt Hervey
Sir Robin Jacob
Rieke Kaup
Lindsey Kent
Stephan Kutik
Frank Landolt
Frank Landolt is Chief Counsel, Intellectual Property and Legal at Confo Therapeutics, a privately held biopharmaceutical start-up based in Ghent, Belgium specializing in GPCR-targeted therapeutics.
After studying chemistry and law at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, Frank worked for almost ten years on pharmaceutical and biotechnological patents and licensing in private practice in the Netherlands, where his clients included major pharmaceutical companies as well as some of the top biotech firms and research institutions in the Netherlands.
Prior to joining Confo in 2018, Frank worked for fifteen years in Ablynx N.V. (now a wholly owned Sanofi company), where he was a member of the management team and headed an integrated IP and legal group of four lawyers and five patent professionals. At Ablynx, Frank was involved in negotiating Ablynx’s strategic partnerships and licensing deals with AbbVie, Boehringer-Ingelheim, MSD, Merck-Serono, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Sanofi, and Wyeth.
From 2000 to 2004, Frank was director of IP and legal counsel at Devgen N.V. (now part of Syngenta), another Ghent-based biotechnology company, where he was involved in negotiating Devgen’s strategic collaborations with Sumitomo, Monsanto, and DuPont Pioneer.
Frank is a Dutch and European patent attorney and also holds a degree in business law from the University of Antwerp. He is a member of the Dutch association of patent attorneys (where he is a tutor for the professional qualification course), EPI, and LES Benelux (where he is involved in the LES Licensing Course). He is a regular speaker on a range of topics relating to IP and licensing in the (bio)pharmaceutical sector. Frank was named as one of Managing IP’s ‘Corporate IP stars’ for four years in a row (2015-2018).
Daan De Lange
Alexander de Leeuw
Alexander de Leeuw is an experienced lawyer specialising in national and international patent litigation.
He frequently litigates before the Dutch courts as well as the European Patent Office. Some examples of cases that Alexander worked on concern CRISPR-Cas9 (Broad/MIT/Harvard), pemetrexed (Sandoz), lithography machines (Carl Zeiss), and surgical laser systems (Alcon).
He also regularly deals with and teaches about the protection of trade secrets, and has been involved in high-profile international trade secret litigation.
Tessa M. Malmund-Cohen
Patrick Mccutcheon
Ewan Nettleton
Arvid van Oorschot
Jason Rice
Roberto Romandini
Roberto Romandini obtained his law degree from the University of Pisa and his LL.M. degree from the University of Munich, where he specialized in patent law. He completed his Ph.D. thesis on the patentability of human stem cells at the Max Planck Institute in Munich before practicing IP law at a leading IP law firm in Milan for 5 years. From 2013 he was a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition in Munich. Since 2019 he has been a legal member at the Boards of Appeal at the EPO.
Jon Singer
Adrian Spillmann
Adrian Spillmann is Director of Corporate Intellectual Property for the Valneva group (a European biotech company focusing on vaccines) in Vienna, Austria, and specializes in patent and trademark prosecution, patent and trademark enforcement, patent drafting, patent portfolio management, in house patent counseling, patent monetization and intellectual property transactions in biotechnology and pharmaceuticals and other life science projects.
His areas of expertise include protection of prophylactics, therapeutics, and diagnostics for infectious diseases, immunological disorders, cancerous diseases, neurodegenerative disorders and metabolic disorders, vaccine technologies, antibody technologies, production of biological and chemical compounds, new medical uses, and formulations of known compounds.
After earning his Ph.D. at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, Adrian was a Consultant at Deloitte, followed by a 7-year stay in various positions in the patent department at Novartis. Furthermore, Adrian was Senior Patent Attorney at Ablynx, an antibody company in Belgium, for three years.
Adrian is a European and Swiss-registered patent attorney and received his LLM from the University of Law in London.
Corinna Sundermann
Corinna Sundermann has been heading the IP department of the Pharma Division at Fresenius Kabi. She joined Fresenius Kabi in 2008 as a Manager and built the IP department from 1 to 30 FTE since then. She has been the Senior Vice President since 2012. Her focus is on generics, branded products, clinical nutrition and medical devices. Before joining Fresenius Kabi, she worked 10 years for an originator company, 5 years as a Head of Combinatorial Chemistry, 5 years in the IP department and has been a European Patent Attorney since 2006. She holds a Dr. rer. nat. from the University of Jena and a diploma in chemistry from the University of Frankfurt.
Craig Svoboda
Otto Swens
Cecile Teles
Cecile is Head Patent Attorney at Zentiva. She has over a decade of experience in the pharmaceutical industry.
Cecile is uniquely experienced and knowledgeable in the pharma space as she has experience in-house at an elite innovator company (Sanofi), biologics (Merck Serono), and extensive generic experience she gained as Zentiva.
Cecile is an enthusiastic manager of her team and was a key member of the IP team in leading the transformation of Zentiva into an independent and competitive generic company after divestment from Sanofi.
Cecile is a qualified European Patent Attorney. She also holds a certificate from CEIPI in patent litigation and most recently completed her diploma as a Master of Laws in France.
Dean Thomas
An experienced life sciences IP lawyer with more than 20 years of experience in house and private practice, throughout Europe.
Akif Mert
Akif Mert is a German lawyer specialising in white-collar crime with more than 10 years of international experience in managing legal, corporate compliance, and data privacy matters in both emerging and highly regulated markets.
He has spent many years in Singapore as the Regional Head of Compliance and DPO of Allianz Asia Pacific before moving to Switzerland in 2020 to assume the role of the Chief Compliance Officer of the Allianz Suisse Group.
Akif is an active member of the German Institute for Compliance and a regular author of publications about digital trends in compliance.
Daniel Gysel
Lora Von Ploetz
Lora von Ploetz is Head of Global Financial Crime Unit at Commerzbank AG, where she is overseeing the cross-border evaluation of significant financial crime events by, tracking, investigating, analysing, and reporting such and is responsible for the information sharing of significant financial threats across the group.
Before taking this position, Lora von Ploetz was Senior Sanctions Officer overseeing New York, London, and Dubai sanctions operations, correspondent banking special investigations among others.
Before joining Commerzbank AG she has held various compliance and legal management roles in Geneva, Moscow, and Sofia.
She holds an LL.M Law and Finance from the Goethe University in Frankfurt and a Master of Law degree.
Paolo Basarri
Raimund Roehrich
Robert Fairless
Sandra Middel
Yuet Ming Tham
German Florez-Villegas
Alexander Ghazvinian
Jennifer Toivola
Jennifer Toivola holds a Master’s degree in law as well as in business administration from the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and is a Swiss Certified Accountant.
Jennifer has worked for many years as a regulatory consultant at KPMG. There she was consulting mainly Swiss Banks on matters related to AML, Compliance, and regulatory requirements.
Since September 2021 Jennifer is the Chief Compliance Officer of Banco Santander International SA.
Strategic Partners
From the market-leading law firms to legal media outlets, our partners continue to play a pivotal role in how we help professionals in the legal field. For more information on how to become a strategic partner, please visit our Marketing Solutions page
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