Arnie Francis

Arnie is a Senior Associate in the Intellectual Property team, based in London. He has worked in the intellectual property profession since 2011 and qualified as both a UK Chartered Patent Attorney in 2015 and a European Patent Attorney in 2016. He has a 1st Class degree in Natural Sciences (Astrophysics) from Cambridge University and an MSc (Distinction) in Computational Aeronautics from Imperial College, London.

He has worked in both private practice and in-house at one of the world's leading telecommunication companies. Arnie has experience working with clients of various sizes, ranging from high-growth start-ups to multinationals, and appreciates the impact this has on nurturing effective policies to protect their intellectual property. Whilst working in-house he drafted and prosecuted numerous telecoms standard-essential patent applications and over the course of his career has represented clients before the UK Intellectual Property Office and European Patent Office across a diverse range of technology areas including graphics and computer processing, telecommunications, robotics, biometrics, machine learning and automotive.

Since joining Gowling, he has worked as part of the team acting for InterDigital in its FRAND dispute with Lenovo. He is also part of the team's Unitary Patent and Unified Patent Court working group to deliver content and guidance on the UPC system for internal and external stakeholders.

In 2018 he was named as one of Managing Intellectual Property's 'Rising Stars'.