How can I help your business

• Help you identify which innovations are suitable for patent protection and advise on the appropriate balance between patenting and trade secret protection based on your business objectives.
• Guide you through key growth stages by providing strategic IP advice to help protect commercially valuable innovations.
• Assist with the drafting, filing and prosecution of patent applications for high-tech and software inventions across the UK, Europe, the USA, Asia and other international jurisdictions.

Overview & Expertise

Matt Pinney is the Office Managing Partner of Marks & Clerk's Cambridge office, a UK & European Patent Attorney, and UPC Representative. He has worked in the patent profession since 2008, advising clients on the drafting, filing and prosecution of patent applications across the UK, Europe, the USA, Asia and other international jurisdictions. He also represents clients in examination and opposition proceedings before the European Patent Office. His experience spans large multinational organisations, SMEs, universities, academic institutions and start-ups.

Matt specialises in electronics, telecommunications, software, medical devices and mechanical technologies. His practice focuses on helping clients secure protection for commercially significant innovations and develop patent strategies aligned with their business objectives.

He has particular experience in standards-based telecommunications technologies, including LTE, 4G, 5G and 6G standard essential patents (SEPs). He advises on the drafting and prosecution of patents in this field and continues to assist clients in obtaining protection for standards-based technologies, particularly relating to 5G and 6G developments.

Matt also has extensive experience of working with inventions in the cybersecurity and cryptography fields. In particular, handling inventions relating to cryptographic key management, mobile application security, digital identity and signing solutions, zero knowledge proofs (ZKPs) and blockchain solutions.

In the semiconductor field, Matt has experience with photolithography and metrology systems; processor architectures; and inventions relating to the secure development and deployment for microcontrollers and IoT devices, provisioning unique cryptographic identities to devices, and ensuring firmware authenticity and preventing unauthorized modifications.

Matt holds an MEng in Electronic Engineering from the University of Leeds (2008).

Client Work & Case Experience

• Acoustic AI start-up — Assisted with building a patent portfolio across multiple jurisdictions, supporting the business from its academic origins through successive investment stages to acquisition by a large US corporate.
• Web server content fetching technology — Successfully represented an opponent before the EPO Boards of Appeal, achieving full revocation of a third-party patent after the patent had been maintained in amended form during opposition proceedings.
• Multinational technology company — Oversees the management of UK and European telecommunications patent portfolios, including drafting strategies that anticipate evolving standards language and prosecution approaches designed to align claims with adopted standards.