Meet Stella Fletcher, Associate Director, Patent Litigation!

ACADEMIA AND MOTIVATION
I grew up on a farm in Scotland, more specifically in a town called Auchtermuchty (yes, there are places more difficult to pronounce than in Portuguese…). However, my connection with Portugal began at quite a young age: my father travelled a lot through the Alentejo in the early nineties and used to bring back terracotta ceramics from Redondo; I grew up with Portuguese wine on our dining table. Little did I know that I would be having Portuguese wine on my own dining table decades later. I was always interested in medicine, and so, fascinated by the intricacies of the human body and the details of its internal workings, I studied Molecular Cell Biology in Nottingham, England. However, I soon realised that lab work was not for me. Luckily, in my final year of study, I happened to have a supervisor whose wife was a solicitor working in intellectual property and who introduced me to the fascinating world of patents, where science mixes with law, business, and language. An M.Sc. in Management of Intellectual Property in London followed, but it was a few years working back in Scotland in a Glasgow patent law firm before I was able to realise my dream of working in patents abroad.

WHY BIAL?
In the summer of 2006, I had two interviews: one to work as an in-house patent attorney with a Big Pharma company at their Paris site, and one for a new role in Bial’s Legal Affairs Department. Right from the outset, the difference was apparent: a small team with the possibility to get involved from the start in projects that would not necessarily be available immediately in a larger organisation. The decision was a no-brainer… although I admit I naively thought Portuguese would be substantially quicker to learn than it proved to be!

WHAT’S IT LIKE TO WORK AT BIAL?
One of the most challenging things about working at Bial is also the best thing: however, frustrating it may sometimes feel having to set aside, midway, a piece of work relating to, say, Korean litigation procedures, and jump into an assessment of the strength of a European patent in the Netherlands compared to Italy, it is more than compensated for by that opportunity to learn. That is the reality of my day-to-day: a continuous learning process. And that is why, almost 20 years since I decided to move to Porto to work with Bial’s patents, it never feels routine.