James Mellor QC was called to the Bar in 1986, having emerged from two periods at King's College, Cambridge with a degree in Engineering, a Certificate of Advanced Study in Manufacturing Engineering and a First in Law. As an engineer he worked both in the UK and in many countries abroad.

At the Bar, his practice covers all areas of intellectual property, media and entertainment law, including EU and other competition aspects. He relishes the variety available in the field of IP law.

James has a large trade mark practice which has followed from the substantial contribution he made to the last edition of Kerly on Trade Marks, but trials with a high degree of technical content, especially patent trials and technical arbitrations,make up a substantial portion of his practice. He is equally at home with every aspect of IT litigation.

Recent trials have included

Aloys Wobben v Vestas-Celtic Wind Technology Limited A patent trial in June 2007 which involved three separate patents, all of which were concerned with the control systems of wind energy systems i.e. wind turbines and the interaction between such turbines and the electrical grids to which they are connected. The requirements of the network operator in relation to the behavior of various types of generation under fault conditions and under varying load conditions was central to the dispute.

Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd & Others v. Warner Lambert A patent trial in the High Court of Ireland in January 2007. The trial was for a declaration of non-infringement of one of Warner-Lambert's patents. The litigation concerned the cholesterol-lowering agent, atorvastatin, sold by Warner-Lambert as Lipitor.

Ferag v. Muller Martini - An appeal to the Court of Appeal in December 2006 from Lewison J. concerning a patent with high speed trimming methods in the print industry.