2 February, 2017
Bird & Bird appoints Anan Sivananthan as a partner in the IP group, based in Singapore.
Anan joins from Creative Technology Ltd where he was Associate Vice President and head of the global legal team. He has worked at Creative since 2000, having initially joined as Director of Legal Services and subsequently been promoted to Associate Vice President in 2007.
Creative is a long-term client of Bird & Bird and Anan is well known and highly respected by a number of Bird & Bird IP partners across the firm who have worked both for and with him for several years.
Anan's particular experience lies in patent litigation; anti-counterfeiting; and IP management and monetisation; as well as trademark litigation and other high value IP dispute resolution matters in many countries. He has also handled many commercial disputes.
Prior to working at Creative, Anan was an IP litigation associate and subsequently a partner at Drew & Napier LLC, one of Singapore's top law firms. He originally trained as a barrister and was called to the Bar of England and Wales in 1991. He subsequently returned to Singapore and was called to the Singapore Bar in 1992.
The appointment of Anan helps fulfil strategic objectives of building and integrating a market leading and well-rounded IP group and will further boost our IP offering across the region, both in terms of partners and associates.
Matthew Laight, Head of the Asia Pacific IP Group says: "Anan brings a different perspective and expertise to the group, given his knowledge base and strong commercial insights as to what the clients' needs are, and how to design and implement a global patent monetisation strategy. This is a highly specialist and attractive skillset, particularly in the Asia Pacific region, where such knowledge remains relatively rare yet where the market requires advice on such matters."
Lorraine Tay, Co-head of Singapore and Head of its IP Group says: "The Singapore IP group will benefit enormously from Anan's appointment as his skills and expertise will further enhance our current offering and enable us to provide the full suite of IP services to clients in the region."