Robert Pitkethly

I am an Emeritus Fellow at St. Peter's College Oxford University having recently retired from being an Official Fellow and Tutor in Management as well as Tutor for Admissions and Tutor for Undergraduates at the college. I have also retired from being a committee member and academic member of the OU Law Faculty's Oxford Intellectual Property Research Centre. Until retiring fully in January 2023 I had also been a member of the Faculty of Management of Oxford University (which the Said Business School is part of) since moving back to Oxford in 1997. My office was in the Eunomia Building in St.Peter's College (where the IP Research Centre was based before it's move to the Law Faculty).

Between February 1996 and October 1997 I was an ESRC Research Fellow at Cambridge University based in The Judge Institute of Management Studies and working with the Centre for Business Research in the Department of Applied Economics. I was also a member of CIBAM the Centre for International Business and Management based in the Judge Institute. Between September 1995 and February 1996 I was a visiting researcher at the Institute of Intellectual Property in Tokyo. Prior to this I was a visiting fellow at Templeton College, Oxford University and a Research Associate of St. Peter's College Intellectual Property Centre in Oxford. Between May 1993 and May 1994 I was a Visiting Research Fellow at the National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (NISTEP), Science and Technology Agency, Japan.

I have in the past qualified as a UK Chartered Patent Attorney and European Patent Attorney and whilst I have recently retired from the UK and European lists of Patent Attorneys, I remain a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys. I have an MBA from INSEAD, France, a MSc in Japanese Studies and a DTI Executive Diploma in Japanese from Stirling University UK. I also have a DPhil in Management Studies from Templeton College, Oxford University based on research into the use and management of Intellectual Property by Japanese and Western companies. I have worked as a Management Consultant with a wide range of industries and before that as a Patent Attorney in both private practice and in industry. I originally studied Chemistry at Merton College, Oxford University.

Between 1997 and 2022 I taught students taking the first year General Management course and also gave tutorials for the Strategic Management option of the BA Economics and Management course which I lectured on about half of during 2001-2005 and all of during 2006-2009. I have also taught IP related material on MBA, EMBA and other courses including those for scientists run by the Oxford Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (including a lecture on IP Management on the popular Building a Business course). I have been interested in the promotion of IP awareness more generally and have worked with a number of bodies such as the European Patent Office and the World Intellectual Property Office in connection with IP Management education and training initiatives both in Europe and further afield for example in Brazil, South Africa and India.

My research interests bridged the fields of Strategic Management and Intellectual Property Law and primarily concerned Intellectual Property Management. This included material which might fall within the fields of Business and Corporate Strategy, Intellectual Property Law, Management of Intellectual Property, Management of Technology, Valuation of Technology and Intellectual Property, Asian Studies and especially but not exclusively, Japanese Studies - relating to the above topics.

My most recent research related to studying Intellectual Property awareness amongst UK industry in association with the UK Intellectual Property Office and regarding intermediation of IP Awareness with the support of the ACCA. I wrote the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO)'s 2006 and 2010 UK Intellectual Property Awareness surveys, the latter of which was published in March 2011. Other recent research has included co-authorship of a report on Intellectual Property Enforcement in Smaller UK firms for the Strategy Advisory Board for Intellectual Property Policy (SABIP). This research was commissioned as an independent input to evidence for policy and published by the UK IPO. These reports and earlier work on links between patent / patent application ownership and VC finance were all referred to by the government commissioned independent Hargreaves Report on IP and Growth.

My current research and other interests following retirement are various but I hope are going to include time for a revisiting of material related to my MSc topic of the early history of the Japanese Patent Office and in particular the work of the first head of the Japanese Patent Office Takahashi Korekiyo.


| Home | CV | Research | Teaching | Questions | Misc. |