Rob Carter

BSc (Hons), PgD, CPE, BVC

Senior Consultant

Rob is a graduate chemist with first class honours, and is a qualified lawyer. He also holds a post-graduate diploma in IP Law from Queen Mary College, London. He is an experienced IP adviser having worked in that specialist area for over 30 years, most of which with the Royal Dutch Shell Group in both the UK and the Netherlands where he gained significant international experience in the creation, management and exploitation of Intellectual Property assets, including through industry and academic collaborations, joint ventures, technology licensing, brand licensing, and numerous national and international M&A transactions. From 1998 to 2014 he was responsible for the IP aspects of all mergers, acquisitions and divestments across the Royal Dutch Shell Group globally, and advised on projects of all sizes ranging from a few hundred thousand US dollars up to US$1.5 billion.

He has drafted and negotiated numerous IP agreements, including confidentiality agreements, IP assignment agreements, R&D agreements, joint development agreements, technology licence agreements, joint venture agreements, trade mark licence agreements and sponsorship agreements. He was the lead Lawyer, both IP and general, on the team which rationalised the ownership of Shell’s non-US trade marks into a single holding organisation.

As a senior member of the Shell IP leadership team, Rob was involved in the development and implementation of IP strategies for Shell’s worldwide businesses, and was responsible for many aspects of the management and exploitation of IP in Shell, including the development and delivery of IP-related training, both online and face-to-face, for business and technical staff, risk identification and management, the customisation and implementation of an electronic system for managing IP-related agreements and a software-based system for the automatic creation of routine IP-related agreements.

He brings his unique combination of scientific, industrial, legal and management experience in one of the world’s largest organisations, to ip21’s clients across the board.