
Friday, January 30th, 2026
4.00pm CET
Fide and TIPSA join forces to organize a serial of digital encounters to try and find out if Intellectual Property is equipped to face the ongoing changes that our world is experiencing.
Monthly meetings with IP experts from all over the world, in which we discuss the key challenges that IP faces today.
Find all the reports from past encounters both individually as well as in yearly collections.
The Global Digital Encounters have formed an Academic Faculty and Family of Speakers and Moderators, composed of worldwide known Academics and IP Senior Specialists from all continents. This Faculty and Family is constantly growing.
Friday, January 30th, 2026
4.00pm CET
Since the start of the 1st industrial revolution and up to now, patents represent a key tool for innovation and economic growth: by providing inventors a safe basis for promoting their research results and allowing investors and society to identifying innovation opportunities and making them blossom, they play a key role in modern economy and society.
Why and how patents serve as a key tool for innovation and economic growth? How patent statistics translate this role? How does the national, international and company race for patents can materialise this role? Are patents the only key tools for innovation and economic growth? Do AI, and tomorrow quantum technologies, affect the importance of patents as a key tool? Can AI used in patent granting procedures affect the role and importance of patents positively or negatively? Should more limits, or less limits, be imposed to current disclosure mechanisms, and to right to use patent mechanisms in the current geopolitical context? Why is the European Patent Office considered worldwide as a model for quality in patents and a major success story for the European construction? How to make patent measurements jointly between competing countries and regions of the World? The Chief Economist of the European Patent Office will discuss, together with distinguished Speakers and Moderator, these questions that are central, for not only European States and inventors and innovators in Europe, but also worldwide.
EPO Chief Economist
4iP Council Managing Director (EU)
Patent Advisor at LU Innovation, University of Lund (Sweden)
Professor of Intellectual Property Law at L. Bocconi University of Milan, Italy
Friday, January 30th, 2026 | 4.00pm CET
Yann MÉNIÈRE
Axel FERRAZZINI
Born in 1978 in France, Axel Ferrazzini initially trained as an engineer in computer science and then specialised in deep-tech technology strategy. He is listed as an inventor on 20 patents and has contributed to standards development organisations for more than 20 years. Axel has served as an elected member of the ETSI Board since 2014, of the Global Intellectual Property Alliance Board since 2022 and is ranked in the IAM Strategy 300: The World’s Leading IP Strategists.
He currently leads 4iP Council, a research organisation promoting the role of intellectual property in European innovation, and heads the programme for the quantum technologies major at a leading engineering computer science school.
Fredrik EDMAN
Member of the Board of the Saco-S Council. Chairman of Engineers of Sweden at Lund University since 2013, union representative since 2004. Member of both Engineers of Sweden and SULF.
Fredrik represents Saco-S on the Board of LTH, Faculty of Engineering. Within Saco-S locally, he works mainly with issues related to intellectual property rights and individual cases.
Fredrik has a great interest in research and education policy, utilisation of research results, open science and issues related to intellectual property rights.
Prof. Laurent MANDERIEUX (Italy/France)
Professor of Intellectual Property Law at L. Bocconi University of Milan, Italy, Member of the Directorate Board, Bocconi LL.M in Law of Internet Technology, Director, Bocconi Summer Schools in Law, Chair, European IP Teachers’ Network, Coordinator, Transatlantic IP Academy and is invited Professor / Lecturer of Intellectual Property Law in Universities and Training institutes in many countries of Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa. In addition to his IP teaching, numerous Publications, and IP research activities at Bocconi, one of the most prestigious and high-ranked Universities in the European Union, Laurent Manderieux is Senior Intellectual Property Expert for various international Organisations and governments. He was for many years Official and Senior Official at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva, Switzerland: in particular, as Head, WIPO Public Affairs and Media Relations, he took care of training and information for government officials, lawyers, researchers, scientists, and business circles (in this capacity he prepared training material and IP publications, and made up to 100 presentations per year). Before joining WIPO, he also worked for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) in Rome, Italy; and at the European Union in Brussels. Over the last two decades, he wrote numerous publications and studies, and undertook international projects for the EU, the EPO, UNDP, UNCTAD, WIPO, IDLO, OIF, and various Governments. In this context, visited some 140 countries. He works in French, English, Italian, Spanish, and German. Member of Fide’s International Academic Council.
If you’re waiting for a signal to sign up to the event, this is it!
Or share!
#GlobalDigitalEncounters