SPEAKING AT:
David Combes is a European and UK patent attorney and a partner at Barker Brettell LLP.
David’s background is in mechanical engineering and physics and he spent ten years working in defence related contract research at QinetiQ. Projects that David worked on include: tuneable MEMS optical etalons and compressed imaging technologies; capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers; inertial measurement devices; high speed indium antimonide transistors; infra-red detectors; and spatial light modulators, hollow waveguides and interferometers.
He got involved in intellectual property as an inventor, working closely with in-house attorneys to protect and license technologies that he was developing and he is named as inventor on seven patent families. Dave started re-training as a patent attorney in 2010 and has worked at Barker Brettell since 2013. Dave has always enjoyed working with universities because he has wide range of technical expertise and enjoys learning about new technologies. He also enjoys working in medical device technologies and artificial intelligence applied to healthcare applications.
He works with a wide range of university clients including: Oxford, University College London, Bristol, Bath, Birmingham, Nottingham, Glasgow, and Southampton, working on inventions relating to physical sciences. Dave also acts for spinouts, SMEs and large corporations developing medical technologies including: wearable ECG devices, AI for identifying atrial fibrillation, neonatal physiological monitoring, machine perfusion of organs, optical magnetoencephalography, and ultrasonic brain stimulation.
Dave particularly enjoys contributing to the success of startups and spinouts by helping them to formulate an IP strategy, identify how to protect their IP and speaking with researchers to understand their work.