Eduardo C. A. de Mello e Souza

Profile

With over 20 years experience in intellectual property, strategy, finance and management, Eduardo supports clients in matters involving the protection, negotiation and valuation of intellectual assets. He is often asked to help value patents, trademarks and copyrights in the context of litigation and contractual disputes.

Eduardo is one of the few generalist professionals in the market, with a complete view of all areas of a company, the interrelationships between the various participants in the innovation cycle and the impacts of intellectual assets on business, placing him in the ideal position to council clients on strategic matters involving IP in Brazil.

With a degree in Control and Automation Engineering from Rio de Janeiro’s Catholic University, Eduardo began his career as a research assistant in the university’s vehicle engineering lab. In 1999 he entered the financial market, working on the treasury desk of an investment bank of a large Canadian conglomerate. In 2002 he became co-founder and general manager of a medical-technology start-up – where he participated in the R&D, intellectual protection and industrialization of the technology, constitution, financing and construction of the company’s network of partnerships, culminating in the international negotiation of foreign IP rights the company obtained along the way.

Eduardo joined Dannemann Siemsen’s patent team in 2008, where he performed prior-art searches, drafted and prosecuted multiple patents before the Brazilian Patent and Trademark Office, obtaining the title of Industrial Property Agent in 2011. In 2012, he assumed responsibility for the firm’s IP Valuation practice – with the goal of helping clients negotiate and extract value from their patents, trademarks, copyrights and designs. In 2018, he further joined the firm’s management, where he oversees the Compliance team and is one of two partners responsible for the operational support areas of the business. He was also named Data Protection Officer in 2019, assisting with compliance, privacy, data protection, cybersecurity and risk management issues.

Internationally, he served as treasurer and member of the board of directors of the Licensing Executives Society International (LESI) between 2014 and 2017 – being the youngest treasurer in the society’s almost 50 years of history – and is still a member of the editorial board of LES Nouvelles, the international licensing journal. He also teaches classes on intellectual property valuation and negotiation.

Eduardo is an inventor, with patents in the field of medical prosthesis manufacturing, he supports the use of innovation in favor of sustainability, writes articles on the intersection of innovation and finance and regularly contributes to international workshops on the valuation of intellectual assets.