The Licensing Executives Society International (LESI) is an association of 32 national and regional societies with more than 10 000 members. The members have an interest in the transfer of technology, or licensing of intellectual property rights - from technical know how and patented inventions to software, copyright and trademarks. The society advances the business of intellectual property globally.
The members include lawyers, patent and trademark attorneys, company management representatives, scientists, engineers, academics, accountants, financiers and government officials.
LESI informs the public, international and governmental bodies and the business community about the economic significance of intellectual property. They encourage high professional standards in the transfer and licensing of technology and industrial or intellectual property rights.
"I am honoured to serve as president of an association that takes the commercialisation of intellectual property so seriously," says Lewis.
"Intellectual property rights have huge value. To the innovator or creator they provide a mechanism to recover research and development costs and to reward ingenuity. Once individuals have created something, it becomes essential to ensure that this creation remains the designer's property - intellectual property - hence patent and trade mark registration. From a business perspective, registered protection for trade marks, inventions and designs that you create is very important.
Lewis specialises in patents, computer law, copyright, industrial designs, intellectual property commercialization and High Court litigation in these areas.
He was president of the association's South African chapter and is a fellow of the SA Institute of Intellectual Property Law. He is a certified licensing professional, and a member of the International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property and the International Federation of Intellectual Property Attorneys.
He holds a BSc (Physics and Maths) and a BSC in Electrical Engineering from the University of the Witwatersrand and a BProc from the University of South Africa. He qualified as a patent agent in 1976 and was admitted as an attorney, and became a partner in Adams & Adams in 1977.
