CELSO L. CRUZ

Mr. Cruz is our Senior Partner who is in charge of our Intellectual Property Department. He occupied that position in 1996 and since then, has been actively involved in all matters relating to the administration, prosecution, enforcement, protection, maintenance and litigation of all intellectual property concerns, including the review and preparation of licensing documents involving technology transfer arrangements. He is a member of the Intellectual Property Association of the Philippines (IPAP) and is the representative of our firm in the Asian Patent Attorneys Association (APAA) and in the International Association For The Protection of Industrial Property (AIPPI). He is also a Director of the Licensing Executives Society of the Philippines. Mr. Cruz also sits in the Board of several corporations as Corporate Secretary and Director. He is also a member of the Philippine Bar Association, the University of the Philippines Alumni Association and the IBP – Makati Chapter. He has attended several local seminars on specialized areas in intellectual property law and numerous international conferences in Switzerland, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan conducted by the International Association for the Protection of Industrial Property (AIPPI) and the Asian Patent Attorneys Association (APAA) from 2003-2006. Prior to his involvement in the intellectual property field, he had extensive practice in the areas of labor law, civil litigation, corporate law, contract law and product liability. He is a co-author of an article concerning product liability and tort published in The International Comparative Legal Guide to Product Liability 2004. He has been teaching Intellectual Property, Statutory Construction and Legal Ethics since 1996 at the University of Perpetual Help College of Law. He started conducting bar review classes in 2006 on some subjects in the area of commercial law and continues to engage in said practice. Mr. Cruz is a graduate of the University of the Philippines College of Law and belongs to its honor society, The Order of the Purple Feather. He was also a recipient of several scholarship grants in the College of Law. He was admitted to the Philippine Bar in 1983.