Workshops & Webinars on IP for Plants and Plant Breeding

Dr. Edgar Krieger has extensive experience in the field of Intellectual Property Protection for plant innovation and has held the position of the CIOPORA Secretary General since 2004. Before CIOPORA, Edgar worked as a lawyer at an international law firm specializing in IP protection, particularly Plant Breeders’ Rights, advising agricultural breeders in several hundred court cases up to the European Court of Justice. Edgar holds a law degree from the University of Bonn and a degree in business administration from the Aachen University of Applied Sciences. He completed his doctoral dissertation on the topic “Farmers’ Exemption in Germany” at the Philipps University of Marburg.

Hend Madhour started to work at UPOV on September 1, 2014.

Hend, a national of Tunisia, holds a Ph.D. degree in Information Systems from HEC University of Lausanne, Switzerland. She is an expert in knowledge management and Web technologies.

From 2010 to 2013 she worked at WIPO as an XML expert and elaborated the first version of WIPO ST.96: Processing of Industrial Property information using XML.

Her last position before moving to UPOV was Business Analyst and Project Manager at NayaMed SA (a Medtronic startup). She was responsible for setting up machine-to-machine communication between different systems within the company.

The responsibilities of Hend include managing and coordinating the development of UPOV IT projects. She is the IT focal point for the UPOV PRISMA PBR application tool.

Leontino Taveira is Head of Technical Affairs and Regional Development at UPOV. He works with policymakers in Latin America and the Caribbean promoting accession to UPOV and assisting the implementation of the UPOV system. With a background in agriculture and plant breeding, he is in charge of organizing the technical work of UPOV, including the development of Test Guidelines and guidance for examination of distinctness, uniformity and stability. Leontino started his career in the private sector as agronomist and nursery manager for ornamental plant production. For the past 18 years, he has worked with Plant Variety Protection in the public sector, both at the national and international levels.

Travis Bliss counsels a variety of clients ranging from individual inventors to small businesses to Fortune 500 companies in nearly all aspects of Intellectual Property law. Travis prepares and prosecutes patent applications; litigates patent, Trademark, and other IP disputes in federal and state courts; represents clients before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Patent Trial and Appeal Board; counsels clients in a variety of IP issues, including due diligence, FTO, infringement, and patentability; and prepares and negotiates IP licenses. From a technology standpoint, Travis’s practice falls largely within the life sciences field and also includes a large focus on novel plant varieties in the agriculture, horticulture, and cannabis/hemp industries. Travis has been a lawyer member of CIOPORA since 2014.

Matthew Chivvis protects his clients’ intellectual property and defends his clients wrongly accused of infringement. His hearing and trial experience is extensive. Intellectual Asset Management 1000 remarked that Matthew is “a skilled technical lawyer and brief writer who can handle large and nuanced cases.” He has litigated patent matters in many of the top patent venues throughout the United States.

Matthew is a registered patent attorney, and his considerable experience includes practicing before the United States Patent and Trademark Office, especially in inter partes and post-grant review proceedings. He also regularly advises clients on plant and agriculture intellectual property matters, including strategic use of plant patents, plant-variety protection certificates, and trademark rights.