Having read Natural Sciences at Trinity College Cambridge, he then simultaneously read for the Bar (called by Grays Inn 1965) and took an LLB from the LSE. He is an Arbitrator, Mediator, Expert Witness and Expert Determiner at 8 New Square, Lincoln’s Inn. He has, inter alia, presided over a very substantial arbitration in the HKIAC.
He practiced at the IP Bar from 1967. Successively he was IP Junior Counsel for the Patent Office and the Government (1975-1981), a Queens Counsel (1981), High Court (1993-2003) and Court of Appeal Judge (2003-2012). He is an active Professor at Faculty of Law, University College London (2012 – to date).
He is Hon. Fellow of the LSE, and St Peter’s College, Oxford. He was Treasurer of Grays Inn in 2007 and a Governor of the LSE from 1988 to 2017. He received Managing IP’s Outstanding Achievement award in 2012. Although no longer a judge, he continues to be President of the Intellectual Property Judges’ Association (the association of European patent, judges).