{"id":8417,"date":"2026-03-26T14:19:38","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T14:19:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/cippm\/?p=8417"},"modified":"2026-02-09T14:19:50","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T14:19:50","slug":"graham-ashley-advocacy-a-judges-perspective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/cippm\/2026\/03\/26\/graham-ashley-advocacy-a-judges-perspective\/","title":{"rendered":"Graham Ashley “Advocacy \u2013 A Judge\u2019s Perspective”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thursday 26 March 2026, 18:00 (BST); BG110<\/h3>\n

The event is free to attend, but registration is required.\u00a0<\/strong> Please e-mail Professor Dinusha Mendis at dmendis@bournemouth.ac.uk<\/a> to book your place.<\/p>\n

Advocacy means more than simply representing and speaking in court on behalf of a client. It is the art of persuasion \u2013 persuading a tribunal that they should reach a particular decision.<\/p>\n

This lecture will look at advocacy from the point of view of someone sat in a court who has to listen to submissions from attorneys \u2013 what judges want to hear and what they don\u2019t want to hear. In particular, it will consider advocacy from a European perspective, with reference to the Unified Patent Court (UPC) and the European Patent Office (EPO).<\/p>\n

The presentation will look at preparation for hearings, including suggestions for structuring submissions; it will consider how generally hearings are conducted, and how to speak effectively before a tribunal.<\/p>\n

Dr Graham Ashley<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0is a technical judge at at the UPC and has been involved in cases in D\u00fcsseldorf, Munich, Milan and in the appeal court in Luxembourg.<\/p>\n

He was formerly chairman of an EPO board of appeal in mechanics, chairing over 500 cases in a wide range of general technology, such as the building\/construction industry, oil exploration, weapons, metal processing, furniture and sanitary equipment (somebody has to do the toilets).<\/p>\n

His background is metallurgy and has a PhD in electrochemistry from Cambridge. In 1996 he was called to the Bar (Lincoln\u2019s Inn), but moved straight away to the EPO in Munich to work as a patent examiner. He was a member of the committee for the European Qualifying Examination (C \u2013 Paper: Opposition), and was responsible for drafting one of the exam papers.<\/p>\n

He is currently involved in training national judges in handling patent disputes, and advises attorneys on presenting cases at hearings before the EPO.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

26 March 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1040,"featured_media":4577,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,5,28],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-8417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-focus-areas","category-forthcoming-event","category-ip-enterprise","category-knowledge-exchange","tag-events"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/cippm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/cippm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/cippm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/cippm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1040"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/cippm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8417"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/cippm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8418,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/cippm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8417\/revisions\/8418"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/cippm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/cippm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/cippm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/cippm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}