Meet The Team: Christine
Meet the team
Welcome to the first of our new series of regular blog posts where we meet key members of the Mathisen & Macara team. We start this series with one of our partners, Christine Gravenell.
Biography
Christine is one of Mathisen & Macara’s partners and has been with the firm since it merged with Compass Patents, a firm she co-founded. She is an expert compliance and formalities professional for global patent filings, registered trademarks, design applications and grants.
Christine has over 23 years of experience as a patent formalities professional. This enables her to administer and assure end-to-end compliance for companies, with their filing of patent applications globally, as well as in Europe and the UK; and also, European grant procedures, monitoring and payment of annuities, and all formalities for registered trademark and design applications.
She passed the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys (CIPA) Administrators' Examination in 2002 and worked in the patent department of BP for 15 years. At BP, Christine was the Formalities Officer to the Patent Attorney in the Patent Department. She then co-founded Compass Patents and moved to Mathisen & Macara when the firms merged. She continues to administer and advise on patent formalities for companies across a wide range of sectors from around the world.
And now we get the opportunity to meet the partner behind this impressive career and discuss her role and interests.
Christine’s Career in Patents
As a partner, Christine’s role at Mathisen & Macara is wide-ranging. It varies from client work to leading the firm’s internal and corporate development activities. Her work is mainly based on formalities work – filing and maintaining patents – but she also does some assignment work and cost estimates for clients.
Despite this busy schedule, she also leads on our subscriptions to the Intellectual Property Regulation Board (IPReg), CIPA, the European Patents Institute (EPI), office insurance and more. And as if that was not enough, Christine is also managing the firm’s move to new offices in the near future.
For her, it is teamwork that gives her the highest satisfaction: “I work with a great team and love being in the office with them.” Coupled with that, she enjoys working with clients and gets “a real buzz when they say how much they appreciate the work we do for them.”
Christine says the proudest moment of her career is when she left BP to set up Compass Patents. “It was a bit scary at first but it was a great learning curve and has taught me a lot about business.” She has found this experience invaluable at Mathisen & Macara.
Looking back at her successful career, she would give some clear advice to her younger self: “try to find a worthwhile job which makes you happy”, advice she has followed. She would also tell herself to “travel more, especially before you settle down with a family.”
Beyond Patents
And if Christine was not at Mathisen & Macara, what would her dream job be? “I would love to be a marine biologist.” She “loves whales, dolphins and all sea life” and would have relished the chance to study them. The only condition attached to this dream job is the weather. It would have to be “somewhere hot.”
Outside the world of patents, Christine loves jiving and has been to many classes and dances in this genre. “I love the dresses and the style of living.” Her passion for this period extends beyond dancing and music: “I have a 1960s caravan which we take out to shows or just camping.”
This approach to enjoying life has reinforced itself post-pandemic. Even more so now, Christine says she tries not to miss any opportunities – “if I am invited somewhere, I go. Life is too short to miss out on things.”
And that is Christine – one of our partners with a wealth of experience in patents with a passion for supporting our clients, working with our teams and great interests beyond the office.