Davies Collison Cave is delighted to announce that Peter Huntsman was elected as the President of the International Federation of Intellectual Property Attorneys (FICPI) at the organisation’s World Congress in Washington, DC in June for a 3 year term. Peter has been involved with FICPI at the international level for about 15 years, and has been the president of FICPI Australia for the past 6 years.
FICPI is an organisation working for the interests of patent and trademark professionals worldwide, as well as for their clients and the Intellectual Property system as a whole. Established in 1906, FICPI is unique as the only international association whose membership consists solely of intellectual property professionals in private practice. It has around 4000 members, with the membership spanning some 86 countries.
FICPI’s work is wide ranging, touching every area of the fast changing Intellectual Property field. This month Peter led a FICPI delegation meeting with senior executives of the US Patent & Trademark Office to discuss activities and issues there, including their backlog of pending patent applications and the difficulties generally in achieving allowance of US patent applications.
In December 2009, Peter will lead another FICPI delegation to the Japanese Patent Office for similar high-level discussions, and likewise in April 2010 to the European Patent Office, the European Commission, the World Intellectual Property Organisation and the World Trade Organisation.
Apart from FICPI’s regular international meetings, Peter will also be attending a symposium presented by the Chinese group of FICPI in Shenzhen in November 2009 and leading a FICPI symposium in New Delhi, India in December 2009.
We are fully supporting Peter in this important new role, and wish him well in it.