Security & Cryptology

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Protecting your technological innovation

In an increasingly connected world, security and cryptography are key features for enabling communication while maintaining privacy and preventing unauthorised access to sensitive information. Secure connections are necessary components of many everyday interactions, including unlocking and starting your car, swiping a smart card to access public transport, paying for shopping at the supermarket and protecting your payment details online. As technologies for attempting to defeat or work around secure connections become more sophisticated, security technology must advance to stay ahead.

Applications relating to security and cryptography are generally considered in Europe to be technical. Patentability is not usually in question, provided technical aspects of the invention are emphasised. Inventions relating for example to new cryptographic techniques and methods of using existing cryptographic techniques to improve security are therefore generally considered patentable in principle, although of course the usual requirements of novelty and inventive step apply. Our patent attorneys have extensive experience dealing with drafting and prosecuting applications at the UK IPO and European Patent Office for cryptography and security-related inventions.

Amy Bishton has experience in prosecuting applications related to security for major consumer electronics applications, such as in key exchange, handshaking, hashing and biometrics.

Carrie Duckworth has experience drafting and prosecuting patent applications for inventions relating to software access, wireless communications devices with physical authentication, biometrics, multi-factor authentication, encryption, threat mitigation, secure identification, trusted path communications, and counterfeit detection for applicants in the UK and overseas.

David Combes has drafted and prosecuted a range of applications covering inventions in areas such as fraud analysis and detection, illicit blockchain transaction detection, secure communications between autonomous vehicles, detection of spectrum misuse by cryptographic methods, distributed authentication methods, and encryption methods.

David Pearce has worked with a large multinational electronics company in the field of security and cryptography for many years and has drafted and prosecuted numerous applications at the EPO relating to security aspects of smart cards and other RFID applications, as well as working with more fundamental inventions relating to novel cryptographic methods and applications.

Francesco Di Lallo has drafted and prosecuted applications relating to cryptographic protocols and quantum-safe encryption, and has prosecuted applications relating to increasing the security of datasets used to train deep learning models and the models themselves.

John Lawrence has experience working with security and cryptography applications relating to blockchain applications for verifying the integrity of code in a distributed network. John has also worked with inventions relating to anti-hacking software, multi factor authentication, quantum encryption and identity verification.

Malin Keijser Bergöö has litigation experience relating to a Swedish mobile bank identification invention, centring around the use of cryptography. Malin has also worked on cryptography and blockchain-related patent applications.

Scott King has worked on prosecuting patent applications for a large telecoms company relating to cryptography and has experience working with inventions relating to security in the financial space regarding payment systems.