Mark is a Scholar of Clare College, where he obtained a double first in Natural Sciences (Zoology), for which he was awarded the Hurst Prize for Zoology. During CPE he was awarded the Hammond Suddard's Prize for Land Law, and was called to the Bar in 1999 with the Bar Prize from the Worshipful Company of Arbitrators.

Practice: Mark's practice covers all aspects of Intellectual Property cases, Media and Entertainment work and IT Disputes, together with associated contractual and European matters. His clients cover the range from multinational pharmaceutical companies, significant brand owners, and media corporations, through to SMEs and individual inventors. In addition to litigation, Mark acts for clients in mediation and arbitration proceedings. He frequently gives seminars on IP related issues, and is one of the authors of the IP sections of Bullen & Leake & Jacob's Precedents of Pleadings. Mark also has experience in obtaining search and freezing orders, in particular in relation to ‘John Doe’ type situations.

Cases: Mark has acted in a number of heavy pharmaceutical patent actions in the last year including tibolone and escitalopram trials, and the atorvastatin appeal. Recently he was involved in providing a highly creative solution to a case involving the drug alendronate. Mark's client sought certainty in the face of a number of pending divisional applications covering this drug, the parent patent of which had been revoked back in 2003. Instead of seeking to attack the applications directly, a claim was brought seeking a declaration that Mark's client's products (insofar as it consisted of the allegedly inventive features of the applications) would have been obvious at the priority date - whereby as a practical result any patent subsequently asserted against the same must be either not infringed or bad for obviousness. The patentee's strike out application failed, as a result of which the action is now proceeding towards trial.

In other cases in the patents field Mark has worked on subject matters including drug polymorphisms, pharmaceutical combinations (and claimed prejudices thereto), computer microchip architectures, mechanical patents and pharmaceutical formulation claims.

Mark also has experience in complex breach of confidence actions, involving both commercial information (such as client lists) and technical matters. He has acted, for example, for clients in cases concerning the alleged misappropriation of proprietary source code - the consideration of which involved a detailed analysis of the structure and content of hundreds of lines of C++ code - and in a claim made in relation to the use of product formulations in the paint manufacturing industry.

At the other end of the scale, Mark frequently acts in relation to trade mark, passing off, copyright and design right disputes, often involving SMEs. He recently acted in a passing off claim between local undertakers - Newman v. Adlem - which raised once more the much discussed issue of the so called "own name defence", as well as more fundamental questions as to the proprietary nature of goodwill. The matter proceeded to the Court of Appeal, where Mark's client was successful on all grounds and achieved indemnity costs on the bulk of his claim.