How I can help your business

• Build commercially valuable patent portfolios that support fundraising, licensing, strategic partnerships and international expansion
• Protect software and AI inventions that present challenging questions of European patentability, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer vision, autonomous systems and advanced data processing
• Advise companies operating across the defence and dual-use technology ecosystem on patent strategies for strategically important technologies, including secure communications, sensing, autonomous systems, photonics, signal processing and advanced engineering
• Protect interdisciplinary technologies spanning physics, engineering and biology, drawing on a scientific background that enables me to understand innovations combining advanced imaging, optics, diagnostics and data analysis
• Coordinate international patent strategies across Europe, the US, China, Australia, Japan and other major jurisdictions, ensuring patent protection supports wider commercial objectives

Overview & Expertise

David Grant is a Partner in London, a Chartered Patent Attorney, European Patent Attorney and UPC Representative. He helps founders, technology companies and multinational organisations build patent portfolios that protect commercially important innovations and support wider business objectives. David manages international patent portfolios and coordinates global prosecution strategies across Europe, the US, China, Australia, Japan and other major jurisdictions.

Within Marks & Clerk, David leads the Defence Sector Group, having developed substantial expertise advising businesses across the defence sector and the wider defence innovation ecosystem, working with both defence primes and start-ups. He understands the commercial and strategic importance of protecting defence and dual-use technologies, working with clients to develop patent portfolios that support long-term technology leadership while navigating the complexities of international protection. 

A significant part of David's practice focuses on computer-implemented inventions and software-related technologies that present challenging questions of patentability before the European Patent Office and the UK Intellectual Property Office. He regularly advises clients developing artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies, and has extensive experience drafting and prosecuting patent applications in fields including AI, photonics, image and signal processing, quantum technologies, cryptography, semiconductors and medical devices, particularly where software and hardware innovation converge.

David also brings an unusually broad scientific perspective to technologies at the interface between the physical and life sciences. His PhD was undertaken as a collaborative research project between the Photonics Department at Imperial College London and the Cell & Molecular Biology Division of The Institute of Cancer Research, giving him first-hand experience of interdisciplinary innovation and enabling him to work effectively with clients developing technologies that combine physics, engineering and biology.

David holds a first-class degree in Theoretical Physics from University College London, an MSc in Optics & Photonics, an MRes in Protein and Membrane Chemical Biology, and a PhD in Photonics from Imperial College London. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys and a Member of the Institute of Physics.