Ruud Peters is the Co-Director of the Center for Intellectual Property (CIP), and CEO at Peters IP Consultancy B.V. ; Former Chief IP Officer and Executive Vice President at Koninklijke Philips N.V.

He is an IP business leader and entrepreneur with both strategic and operational capabilities, who created and managed one of the world’s leading and most successful IP businesses as Chief Intellectual Property Officer of Philips for a period of 15 years till the end of 2013. In 2014 he established his own IP Consultancy company providing consultancy in IP strategy and organizational matters to enterprises and institutes around the globe. In addition, he is acting as board member/advisory board member/advisor for Iprova Sarl, Lausanne, Switzerland; School of Management, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China; Institute for Intellectual Property Management, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China; Center for Intellectual Property (CIP), Gothenburg, Sweden; AI Patents, North Carolina, USA and Arbell Energy, Tel Aviv, Israel. In 2017 he was appointed as Guest-Professor at the School of Management, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.

He was inducted into the IP Hall of Fame in 2010 and he received an Outstanding Achievement Award for his lifetime contributions to the IP field from Managing Intellectual Property magazine in 2014 . He frequently speaks at major international IP conferences/webinars and also writes regularly articles in leading IP and business magazines. Ruud has a background in physics (Technical University Delft, The Netherlands).

Xiaowu (Emil) Zhang is Huawei’s head of Strategic Planning and Key Projects Department, responsible for planning the company’s IP strategies and leading critical IP related projects. Before this role, Emil was leading one IP Department of Huawei responsible for end-to-end IP matters relating to Huawei’s important portfolios such as Wi-Fi, multimedia, semiconductor, etc., as well as provides legal supports to Huawei’s R&D teams. With his 20 years with Huawei, Emil leads Huawei’s various IP practices, including complicated overseas IP disputes resolution, standard essential patent licensing, technology licensing, business cooperation, as well as portfolio planning.   

Anett Preßler holds a Physics degree from the University of Hamburg and has built her career in intellectual property with a focus on the automotive industry. After starting in the patent department at Dräxlmaier, she joined Volkswagen’s IP team in 2012, where she qualified as a European Patent Attorney and expanded her expertise in patent prosecution and strategic IP management.

She played a key role in establishing a patent team in one of Volkswagen’s operations in the United States, supporting the company’s IP strategy. Today, Anett serves as Team Lead in Patent Prosecution at Volkswagen, overseeing the IP strategy and caretaking of the company’s patent portfolio in the field of vehicle body, interior, production, and chassis.

Joel Georges Willers is Senior IP Intelligence Expert at Giesecke+Devrient, where he supports strategic decision-making through patent analytics and competitive technology intelligence.

He has more than 15 years of international experience across intellectual property, business development, and innovation ecosystems. Prior to joining G+D, Joel held several roles in the patent analytics and IP services industry, including positions at LexisNexis Intellectual Property Solutions, PatentSight, Questel, and Morningside. During his time, he led business development for France and francophone markets, helping organizations leverage patent analytics to align IP portfolios with business strategy.

Earlier in his career, Joel managed large-scale international exhibitions and public sector innovation initiatives, including serving as Deputy Director of the German Pavilion at Expo 2010 in Shanghai.

His work today focuses on translating complex patent data into actionable insights that support technology strategy, competitive intelligence, and innovation management.

Taiki Yamamoto is a Senior Researcher in the Sustainability Management Consulting Department of the Industrial Division at the Japan Economic Research Institute (JERI), a research institute affiliated with the Development Bank of Japan (DBJ).

At JERI, with a focus on sustainability and long-term value creation, he leads consulting projects in management strategy and business development, including strategic planning and market research for new business opportunities. He also conducts competitive and corporate patent portfolio analyses, as well as industry technology trend research. In doing so, he translates patent information into management intelligence that informs strategic decision-making for corporate clients and financial institutions. Before joining JERI, he worked as a venture capitalist at an impact investment fund and, prior to that, at a consulting firm, where he provided hands-on support to corporate planning divisions.

Heather Kleinhardt is a shareholder at Young Basile Hanlon & MacFarlane, P.C. and co-director of the International Patent Law Clinic at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law. Her practice focuses on strategic patent portfolio development, helping clients turn intellectual property into a business advantage through the use of data analytics and competitive intelligence.

Young Basile is a Chambers USA-ranked firm with six offices nationwide, representing clients from venture-backed startups to Fortune 5 technology companies and advising across the full innovation lifecycle.

As a patent information expert, Philippe Borne is member of the board of the CFIB (the French speaking patent information user group) since 2019. Qualified as a pharmaceutical doctor, he participated in the design of the Pharmsearch pharmaceutical patent database, a project involving INPI, the French Patent and Trademark Office, and other parties. This permitted him to get in close contact with the patent information professionals from the major pharma/chemistry companies in Europe, especially Germany, and in the United States.

Mr. Borne later became deputy manager of the INPI IP search service before joining the regional branch department of INPI in 2008. His main tasks involve raising the awareness of businesses, especially SMEs, about intellectual property and to get them to implement an active IP policy. Patent analytics is one of the subjects he has to monitor as part of his missions.

He is now the head of the INPI branch office in Strasbourg. In June 2021, he joined the group of experts of the EPO Patlib network, and as such he has played a quite active role in the EPO Knowledge Transfer to Africa project, aimed at supporting the African universities in their development projects.

His current activity allows him to interact with entrepreneurs, IP practitioners, and the whole network of those structures whose objective is to support innovation and the development of businesses. He recently started focusing on the geostrategic aspects of IP.