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Hazel joined the IP community over 20 years ago and qualified as a Trade Mark Attorney in 2003. Since that time, she has been continuously involved in the activities of APTMA, being involved in the Social committee, the Trade Marks Law and Practice Committee, the Rules Review committee, and sitting on the Association’s Exco for over a decade. Hazel has held several leadership roles within APTMA, serving as Chair of its Social Committee, Vice President in 2018, and being elected as the Association’s President in 2023.

A prolific writer and speaker, Hazel has contributed to publications like the World Trade Mark Law Report and co-authored a chapter in Trade Secrets Throughout the World. She is an active member of ECTA, PTMG, and INTA, where she has served on various committees focused on anti-counterfeiting, enforcement, and trademark office practices.

Estonian Kai Härmand is the second permanent judge at the Nordic-Baltic regional division. Like Stefan Johansson, she is currently only involved in the UPC cases pending before this division. Parallel to the UPC, Kai Härmand has been a judge at the Harju County Court since 2020. Prior to this, she was deputy secretary general at the Estonian Ministry of Justice and a legal adviser at the Estonian Patent Office. Between 2006 and 2014, Härmand was a legally qualified member of the EPO’s Enlarged Board of Appeal.

Michael’s practice focuses on complex contentious intellectual property and technology matters, and domestic and international commercial disputes. Michael also has an extensive experience in regulatory disputes and investigations, product liability, and judicial review. He has a particular focus on the life sciences and technology sectors. Michael has acted in some of the leading intellectual property, technology and commercial disputes in Ireland and have extensive experience advising on Irish Commercial Court litigation, and ADR.

As a partner in the intellectual property team in Munich, Daniela advises and represents clients in IP law, particularly in life sciences.

While her technical speciality is in organic and pharmaceutical chemistry, she also represents clients in other fields of chemistry including fibres and inorganics, as well as medical devices such as IV catheters, artificial heart valves and respiratory masks.

Daniela also has in-depth experience in European and German patent law, obtaining patents, defending and attacking patents in opposition proceedings before the German and European Patent Office and acting in nullity suits before the German Federal Patent Court and the Federal Supreme Court. She had additionally gained vast experience before the UPC from day 1 when the UPC opened its doors

A native of Craughwell, Co. Galway, James is a career Civil Servant who first joined the IPOI in 1991, working in various roles for over 15 years. He was a National Expert with the European Commission in Alicante working on the establishment of the EUIPO. James spent 5 years in the Intellectual Property Unit of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment where he was responsible for Trade Marks, Designs and IPR Enforcement policy.

James has spent the past 4 years as an Adjudication Officer and Mediator with the Workplace Relations Commission based in the southeast. He holds an Honours Bachelor of Law (LL.B.), a BA in Public Management and a Dip. in Legal Studies. He is also a certified mediator with the Mediation Institute of Ireland.

Dr Lawrence Cullen established his own consultancy, Lawrence Cullen@ConsultingIP, in 2025 to pursue his interests in biotechnology and in the role and relevance of SPCs. He is also a visiting scholar at the School of Law, University of Sheffield where he is collaborating on some research projects in IP and biotechnology. Dr Cullen was a Deputy Director at the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) in the UK from 2007 to 2024 where he had responsibility for operational delivery of SPCs and for patents in the pharma, organic chemistry and biotech fields. He joined the IPO in 1997 as a patent examiner in chemistry and worked in a variety of operational, technical and policy roles in patents and trademarks before taking on the Deputy Director role. Dr Cullen has a wide experience as a hearing officer dealing with questions of validity and patentability, having been involved in over 50 patent and over 25 SPC cases before the IPO and subsequent appeals before the UK courts and, prior to 2021, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). He has also worked as a hearing officer adjudicating trademark disputes. Dr Cullen was educated in chemistry in Ireland and the UK and worked as a research scientist at various universities in Europe and USA before joining the IPO.

Dr Margaret Hartnett is a widely published, award-winning, IP expert and Artificial Intelligence researcher and inventor.

A triply qualified (EU, UK, IE) patent attorney and trademark agent, Dr Hartnett has represented a vast spectrum of clients from SMEs, Universities and the largest tech corporations for almost 25 years.  Unusual for a patent attorney, Dr Hartnett is also a former Director of Legal and Operations of an AI-driven tech company.  In this role, she dealt with the broad range of day-to-day legal issues encountered in tech companies, including open source licensing.  Driven by this experience, Dr Hartnett adopts a pragmatic and holistic perspective of IP usage, wherein she specifically recognises and addresses the importance of open innovation and open-source software to the success and growth of the tech sector