Chris Vindurampulle PhD

Chris is a senior patent and trade mark attorney who is registered to practice before the intellectual property offices of Australia and New Zealand. He is experienced in patent drafting, patent and trade mark prosecution and opposition, and freedom to operate, opinion and due diligence work. Through his experience and delivery of highly-regarded client service, Chris has been recognised as a leading patent practitioner having been listed in the IAM Patent 1000 as a recommended individual for patent prosecution, and a Rising Star in 2021 and 2022 by Managing IP.

During his career as an IP specialist, Chris has gained broad and significant experience in relation to biopharma (including pharmaceuticals and biologics), biotechnology, medical devices, diagnostics, methods of medical treatment and prevention, agritechnology (including plant breeders rights, animal and plant transgenics, pesticides and machinery) and food-technology (products and processing technology). Additionally, Chris has experience with alloy design and production, metal casting and processing, and hydrocarbon processing.

Chris’ PhD thesis investigated a phenomenon known as epitopic suppression which occurs when subjects immunised with a recombinant bacterial vaccine fail to develop an appropriate immune response due to pre-existing immunity to the bacterial vector. Following completion of his PhD, Chris spent six years as a postdoctoral research scientist during which he developed and patented two key technologies. The first was a new live-attenuated vaccine against disease-causing Salmonella paratyphi A. The patent for the vaccine has since been licensed to an Indian biotechnology company. The second was a DNA vector platform for use in a live-attenuated bacteria that enables foreign gene expression in bacteria without antibiotic resistance markers.

Chris is also a strong contributor to the research and start-up sector, providing education and mentoring on the topics of identifying, protecting and leveraging multinational clients.

Chris comes to Pearce IP from the multinational firm K & L Gates where he has provided strategic advisory and prosecution services for Australian and multinational firms.