Programme Speakers
Alastair Fleming
Alastair is the Deputy Head of the Legal Division at Edinburgh Research and Innovation Limited (ERI). ERI is a wholly owned subsidiary of the University of Edinburgh with responsibility for the University's interactions with industry in relation to funded research and technology transfer. ERI also supports researchers with the activities necessary to obtain research funding from Government, charities and other grant-giving bodies.
The Legal Division is a group of five solicitors and two contract administrators which is responsible for drafting, reviewing and negotiating all contracts between the University and third parties in the area of research and IP commercialisation. Since joining ERI's Legal Division in 2002, Alastair has specialised in high-value industrial research contracts, IP licences and the creation of spin-out companies. He was the lead solicitor for the University in the negotiation and spinning out of MTEM Limited, which having received initial funding of £7.4 million in 2004, was one of the largest ever spin-out from any Scottish University. He provides general legal support to the activities of the University's College of Science and Engineering and manages the two contract administrators who deal with minor, but none the less critical, contracts such a Confidentiality Agreements (or NDAs) and material transfer agreements.
Alastair describes himself as a pragmatic lawyer who is keen to seek legally and commercially acceptable solutions to the day to day problems that arise in the technology transfer business. He has a wide range of commercial legal experience having been a member of the widely respected IP and Technology Law Group of one of Scotland's leading commercial and corporate law firms, MacRoberts. Whilst there he provided advice to a mix of blue-chip, SME and public sector organisations (including Strathclyde University's Research and Consultancy Service).
In addition to being a qualified lawyer, Alastair has also spent time working in the University's GeoSciences School during which he completed a part-time PhD in long-term landscape evolution using cosmogenic isotopic analysis.
