Select a Country ARIPO OAPI Algeria Angola Benin Botswana Burkina Faso Burundi Cameroon Cape Verde Central African Rep Chad Comoros D R Congo Congo Ivory Coast Djibouti Egypt Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Ethiopia Gabon Gambia Ghana Guinea Kenya Lesotho Liberia Libya Madagascar Malawi Mali Mauritania Mauritius Morocco Mozambique Namibia Niger Nigeria Reunion Rwanda Sao Tome Senegal Seychelles Sierra Leone Somalia South Africa Sudan Swaziland Tanzania Togo Tunisia Uganda Western Sahara Zambia Zimbabwe

BEEE Status: We have received our Level 3 Accreditation for 2011/2012

Victor Williams
e-mail

Victor has mechanical engineering and law degrees, is an admitted attorney and registered patent attorney. He is the president of the South African Institute of Intellectual Property Law. Victor moved to Hahn & Hahn Inc from Adams & Adams and is the head of our Trade Marks department. He is also involved in litigation and valuations in all areas of intellectual property. Victor is an IP consultant to Eversheds and is a senior adjudicator of the Institutes' alternate dispute resolution provider for settling domain name disputes. Lastly, Victor is the Financial Director of Hahn & Hahn Inc.

Janusz Luterek
e-mail

Janusz's qualifications include a B.Eng (Chemical) and a B.Proc. He is an admitted attorney of the High Court of South Africa, a patent attorney and a registered professional engineer. Janusz is also a member of several professional, industrial and legal societies. Janusz moved from Adams & Adams to join Hahn & Hahn Inc in 1997. In 2001 Janusz passed the Australian Institute of Patent and Trademark Attorneys patent drafting examination.

Before joining the profession, Janusz worked in the chemical, food and beverage, and pharmaceutical industries for a number of years. Janusz's current activities include patent drafting, litigation, searching, providing opinions on novelty and infringement of patents and designs, and prosecuting local and foreign patent and design applications. Janusz is fluent in English, Afrikaans and Polish and reads Czech. Janusz also acts as an IP consultant to Eversheds. He serves on the EXCO of AIPPI South Africa.

Janusz’s technical fields of specialization include petrochemical engineering, food and beverage engineering, pharmaceuticals, catalysis, IT and business method related patents while also handling some mechanical and electrical patent applications.

Clyde Michael
e-mail

Clyde holds degrees in electronic engineering and law. He is a qualified attorney and patent attorney. He moved from Adams & Adams to join Hahn & Hahn in 2000.Clyde has been involved in patent and design searching, providing opinions on novelty and infringement of patents and designs and drafting and prosecuting local and foreign patent and design applications since the beginning of 1997.

Pieter Venter
e-mail

Pieter holds B.Sc., B.Sc.(Hons), M.Sc. degrees in chemistry and an LLB degree. He is a qualified attorney and patent attorney. He moved from Adams & Adams to join Hahn & Hahn in 2001. Pieter is interested in all aspects of intellectual property law and is involved in patent litigation and the drafting and prosecution of local and foreign patent applications.

Youngmi Ra
e-mail

Youngmi graduated with a B.Sc. (Biol) and an M.Sc. (Microbiology) in South Korea. Later Youngmi qualified as a Korean patent attorney and practised for 13 years at three of the largest patent and law offices in Korea before moving to Hahn & Hahn Inc in South Africa. Youngmi specialises in filing and prosecution of patent applications worldwide and has extensive international litigation experience in the chemical, pharmaceutical and biotechnology fields.

Vanessa Lawrance
e-mail

Vanessa holds B.Comm and LLB degrees; the final semester of the latter degree was completed at the University of Leiden, Netherlands. She also holds diplomas in Corporate Law and Drafting and Interpretation of Contracts. Vanessa moved from Adams & Adams to join Hahn & Hahn Inc in 2002. Vanessa is a Trade Mark Practitioner and is primarily involved with Trade Mark litigation, Copyright and Internet matters. She is a qualified Notary and also an accredited Assessor and Mediator.

Madelein Kleyn
e-mail

Madelein Kleyn is a qualified Chemical engineer, an admitted attorney and a registered Patent Attorney and has completed her LLM in Taxation and her PhD in Private Law with the University of Cape Town. She is a member and Director of LES (License Executive Society) South Africa) and SAIPA (South African Institute of Patent Attorneys).

Madelein started her career as Chemical Engineer with Mintek in Randburg in 1991. She joined Sasol, an international company and the largest South African Petrochemical company, as process engineer in 1993 whilst completing her law studies part time. She completed her articles at Patent firm Adams & Adams on secondment from Sasol. In 1995 she returned to Sasol where she established the Intellectual Property (IP) Services department in the R&D division of Sasol Technology. In 1999 she was appointed as IP Legal advisor of Sasol Limited with the aim at establishing IP management for various Sasol companies and business units on an international basis.

Madelein has served as in-house Patent Counsel for Sasol in Rosebank for 16 years. Her main areas of expertise include IP strategy development and implementation (both defensive and offensive), Merger and Acquisition IP integration matters and due diligences, IP portfolio management, patent prosecution, drafting of IP related agreements and negotiation of IP business related transactions, IP litigation (US, Europe and South Africa) and European patent opposition matters.

She left the employment of Sasol at the end of 2009 to pursue her career further at Oro Agri (Pty) Ltd, a company manufacturing and selling patented fertilizer and pesticide products. The company is based in Somerset West, Western Cape where she is the Group Manager for corporate legal and IP matters for the international group of Oro Agri companies which include Oro Agri Inc and Oro Agri International Ltd. She recently, on a part time basis, joined South African law firm Hahn & Hahn attorneys and patent firm Hahn & Hahn Inc as a professional assistant.

Madelein has presented various papers at national and international conferences on the subjects of intellectual capital, IP due Diligence, IP strategy and IP management.

Formal qualifications:
B. Sc (Chemical) Engineering (University of Potchefstroom) in 1991, B. Proc (University of South Africa) in 1995, Law School of South Africa (Association of South African Law Societies) 1996, Attorney at law of the Higher Court of South Africa admitted in 1997, LLB (University of South Africa) in 1999, Patent Attorney, admitted in 2000 and LLM (Tax) (Rand Afrikaans University) in 2003. PhD (Private Law) December 2010 ( University of Cape Town). Member of SAIIPL and LES SA.

Yolandie Hoffmann

Yolandie worked at Adams & Adams from 1996 to 2001 and at Bowman Gilfillan (John & Kernick) from 2001 to 2004. She decided to join Hahn & Hahn Inc in July 2004 and holds the position of Patents Paralegal in our Patent Department. She has a total of 17 years patent experience. In particular, Yolandie heads up our PCT National Phase Patent Department and is involved in all aspects of patent administration and prosecution for these applications.

Elke Harck
e-mail

Elke Harck is the Patent Administration Manager for Hahn & Hahn Inc and Eversheds which position Elke has held for 23 years. Elke lived in Germany and the USA before coming to South Africa and is fluent in both German and English

Dorothy Imrie
e-mail

Dorothy joined Hahn & Hahn Inc in 2002 and holds the position of Local Trade Marks Manager. In particular, Dorothy oversees trade mark filings, searches and prosecution in South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho and Swaziland

*Alan J.S. Dunlop
e-mail

Alan holds mechanical engineering and law degrees. He is a registered professional engineer, a registered patent lawyer in South Africa, Canada and Malawi, and was the President of the South African Institute of Intellectual Property Law.
Alan's current activities encompass all aspects of intellectual property, from drafting patent specifications and design applications to copyright, trade mark and unlawful competition advice and licensing contracts.

A major part of his practice is conducting patent litigation in the Patent Court and on appeal in the Supreme Court of Appeal. His special interest is design law, he is the Reporter on the FICPI CET2 committee, Chairs the S.A. Design Law committee, and was a national Council member of Design South Africa. Alan is chairman of the Judges Panel of the annual Design Prototype Awards of the Design institute of the SABS and SAIIPL. Alan is the author of numerous papers on intellectual property law and related topics, worked in the Statutory Advisory Committee in drafting amendments to the Copyright Act, the Designs Act and was chairman of the drafting committee of the Petty Patents Act.

Alan has worked in the steel industry, gaining valuable experience relating to steel manufacturing technologies and general engineering and computer technology.

* Alan Dunlop has retired from practice but is still of Counsel from time to time. Please contact Hahn & Hahn on our central e-mail for any enquiries