Bridge between R&D and Intellectual Property (IP)

What are you going to do?

As a Patent Attorney / Patent Specialist, you fulfill a key role in obtaining and maintaining Enza Zaden’s freedom to operate position (FTO) from an IP perspective. You act as the bridge between the Legal (IP) department, R&D and our external patent advisors. Your focus is the follow up on IP related activities and you guide your R&D colleagues in patent cases. In this position, you work closely with breeders and researchers which are the specialists in their respective crop and biotechnology fields.

You will lead third party patent analyses and you will guide and further build on Enza Zaden’s own IP Portfolio. You are communicative and can quickly switch between subjects at various levels in different contexts. You will closely follow the patent activities of our international competitors. With the support of your IP colleagues and under the supervision of the Global Legal & IP Business Partner, you counsel your R&D colleagues on opportunities to protect their inventions.

Your responsibilities are:

• Discussing technical developments with internal inventors;
• Studying and analyzing scientific and technical documents, to assess whether a technical development is patentable;
• Prosecute Enza Zaden’s patent applications (worldwide) and managing interactions with the external advisors we are in close contact with;
• Prepare FTO analyses per crop/technology, if necessary, with the assistance of our external patent attorneys;
• Evaluation of inventions and provide opinions regarding third party patents (freedom-to-operate, validity of third parties' IP rights, and other IP-related matters).

Your power

You will work in the exciting field of IP and R&D for an innovative global market leader in the seed industry. You have affinity with IP, in particular with patents. With your biotech knowledge you further strengthen the Legal (IP) department. You are curious, enjoy reading up on new material and want to help shape and work in an international environment. You are precise, structured and set high standards for your own work but at the same time look for pragmatic solutions. Finally, a high degree of initiative and solution orientation characterizes your approach to new challenges.

In short, you;

• Have a University degree in Life Sciences (PhD is preferred);
• Have a relevant technical background in plant molecular biology or plant molecular genetics;
• Are a Dutch/European Patent Attorney or have the ambition to qualify as such;
• Are experienced in searching, studying and reviewing scientific literature and patents;
• Have passion for research and innovation and the capability to quickly understand technological developments;
• Have the ability to pro-actively organize a challenging workload;
• Are an open personality, comfortable working in a complex and international environment;
• Are a team player with a strong sense of responsibility and the capability of working independently;
• Are proficient in Dutch and English.

Our power

Enza Zaden is a vegetable breeding company that develops vegetable varieties. We produce and sell the seeds of these varieties all over the world. Both for conventional and organic growers. In order to explain this properly we have made an animation.

For more than 80 years we are working with the best that nature offers. We support this with state-of-the-art technologies to speed up our breeding process. That is really necessary, because currently the development of a new vegetable variety takes up to 6 to 10 years.

The results? Strong, healthy, tasty and climate-proof vegetable varieties with higher yield per square meter and less need of crop protection products or fertilizer.

Our strength? More than 2000 passionate colleagues worldwide working together on the vegetables of tomorrow. We continuously invest in knowledge and skills with our Enza Academy and under the flag of enzActive we organize various sports activities to stay sharp and savvy.

Contact

Please, send your application to our HR department, via the 'Apply' button.

More information:

Martine Rook, Corporate Recruiter, +31 655220474 or e-mail; m.rook-wijnker@enzazaden.nl