David Merrylees by Ivan Ahlert

David Merrylees by Ivan Ahlert

Ivan Bacellar Ahlert

David Merrylees graduated in Engineering from Oxford University, was a patent specialist accredited by the Chartered Institute of Patent Agents and worked for the London firm Abel & Imray. In 1969, he was hired by Dr. Peter Siemsen and started working in our office. As far as we know, David was the first patent professional with an academic background in the field. Until then, engineers learned the trade in daily practice, as there were no preparatory courses in Brazil, which only began many years later, offered by ABAPI.

With this profile, David trained the following generations of patent professionals with great competence and patience, creating a great differential in our office.

When I applied for a position at the firm in August 1981, it was David who interviewed me. He asked me to describe to him how a light switch works mechanically, which I knew how to do, more because I liked taking things apart at home than because of what I had learned at engineering school.

The first patent application I wrote, for an adjustable footrest for bus passengers, I “inherited” from my colleague José Santa Rita. He ended up giving up because every time he took a draft of the application to David to review, David suggested some changes. When he said he didn’t want to do it anymore, I immediately decided to carry on with the work and then it was my turn to try and pass David’s rigorous sieve. I also went back and forth a few times until he was satisfied. David was quite demanding, perhaps because he believed, as I think he did, that learning how to draft a patent application and formulate its claims is the basis for acquiring a solid understanding of patents.

David was at the same time a demanding and friendly person, as well as being communicative. He liked to stop by colleagues’ offices, sometimes taking the opportunity to look up the best translation for a technical term. With his intelligence and command of writing, he was the person we turned to when we had to report an unfavorable decision by the INPI in an important case.

David introduced me to the ABPI’s Patent Committee, of which he was coordinator at the time, along with Maurício Leonardos from the then Momsen Leonardos law firm. I remember that at a meeting of the Patent Committee in Salvador, at an ABPI Seminar in 1989, when I had been with the firm for 8 years, without any prior warning he asked me to report to the committee members on the situation of utility models and my criticisms of the way the INPI examined them. David liked to delegate responsibilities to younger people as a way of accelerating their professional maturity. A few years later, I asked David to let me replace him in coordinating the Committee, which he readily accepted.

David and Maurício were also the Brazilian delegate and sub-delegate to FICPI for several years. David had an extraordinary ability, with no preparation whatsoever, to give a clear opinion on the topics discussed at the FICPI Executive Committee meetings, in front of an audience of around 80 to 100 delegates. David was well liked and respected at FICPI. An English colleague, Julian Crump – who would go on to become president of FICPI – once told me that the average IQ went up when David entered the meeting room. At FICPI, as well as being a delegate, David was chairman of the Deontology committee, an honorary member and an emeritus member.

It was also David who introduced me in 1998 to group 3 of the FICPI TEC, which was dedicated to the study of international patent issues. At the first meeting I attended alongside him, one of the participants asked how we could protest against a proposal contained in a draft WIPO treaty that would restrict the work of local prosecutors, to which I replied, timidly, that we could defend the free exercise of the profession on the basis of an article in the Paris Convention that gives member countries the autonomy to legislate on the appointment of prosecutors in each country. David must have laughed inside. He knew that I had always enjoyed studying these subjects. Two years later, David (for ABPI), I (for ABAPI) and John Orange (president of FICPI) were defending this position during the Diplomatic Conference for the adoption of the Patent Law Treaty (PLT). We managed to bring five votes from Latin American countries, including Brazil, to our position, which helped create an impasse that was only overcome by an amendment to the article we were opposing, which reduced its scope.

Again in line with David’s surprises, when I arrived in Newport Beach, California, in 2002 for my first participation in a FICPI Executive Committee meeting, David told me that he had suggested my name to make a presentation at a WIPO conference in Geneva the following week, replacing the FICPI president who was ill, where I would initially go only as a listener.

David liked to keep physically active. As well as sailing, which he enjoyed very much, while we were still at the headquarters in Rua Marques de Olinda, he sometimes played squash with our small group. He never missed a chance to correct my American pronunciation of “squésh” to the British “squósh”.

At the firm, David was head of patents, head of IT and finally senior partner, succeeding Dr. Peter Siemsen after decades of leading the firm. David still stayed at the firm for some time after his retirement as a partner at the age of 70.

I still had a few opportunities to meet him after he retired. On one of these occasions, at an ASIPI event in honor of Dr. Peter at Gávea Golfe, I found David looking so youthful that I asked him if he had had plastic surgery, to which he replied that he had not.

We last met socially on July 19, 2024, at a dinner that Denise and I gave him. He seemed as well and in good spirits as ever.

We heard from the Council about his hospitalization on Monday, September 9, 2024. David passed away on September 12, 2024.

In my opinion, together with Peter Siemsen and Gert Dannemann, David Merrylees formed a triple pillar of giants who helped shape the office we have today.

Note: For quick release, this English version is provided by automated translation without human review.