About Us

Cipher is a founding member of the Open Register of Patent Ownership (ORoPO), which is committed to improving the data quality around patent ownership.

Cipher is a member of LOT Network as we believe that patents should encourage innovation and not litigation. Read our report on the LOT Network portfolio.

Cipher supports academic programmes to expand understanding of intellectual property including CIP at Gothenburg and Berkeley Universities and Skoltech.

We work with organisations such as AST and OIN to promote patents as strategic assets, by promoting the message through a number of channels.

Nigel is CEO and co-founder of Cipher. Nigel’s background is as an IP lawyer, having been a partner at Slaughter and May, London for 20 years.  Throughout his career Nigel has focused on the creation, defence and exploitation of IP assets, and helping companies, their advisers and investors understand the importance of intangible assets. Nigel is a director of ORoPO (the Open Register of Patent Ownership) and is a recognised as an expert by the IAM Strategy 300.

Steve is the co-founder and responsible for the design and implementation of Cipher. Previously he was CTO of a UK-based FinTech startup, Garlik, until its sale to Experian in 2011. Steve was a researcher at the University of Southampton, specialising in Artificial Intelligence, Information Extraction, and Graph Databases. Steve advises the UK Government and European Commission.  In 2020 Steve was recognised as an expert by the IAM Strategy 300.

Stewart leads the Commercial arm of Cipher, managing the Sales, Customer success and Marketing teams, responsible for delivering revenue.  Stewart has run commercial teams, previously as Head of Sales and Marketing at Maplecroft for 4 years.  Prior to that he was at Wood Mackenzie for 12 years, where he held sales leadership positions in Europe and US, launching the sales effort in New York around Institutional Investors.  He started his career at Jobsite.

Niall leads the team working on integrating strategic patent intelligence solutions into client workflows. Niall has over 20 years experience in research and analysis, specifically covering upstream oil & gas, energy markets and above ground risk. Niall was Senior VP Head of Research with Verisk Maplecroft.  Previous to that Niall was Head of Investment Research with Wood Mackenzie in New York.

Francesca is responsible for building awareness of the Cipher brand and lead generation. Francesca worked at Wood Mackenzie for 16 years in Marketing, building teams in Asia and Europe; focusing on building brands in new markets, product launches,  acquisitions and developing new business leads for sales.  Francesca started her Marketing career at Procter & Gamble.

Grace is responsible for the implementation of our people strategy, driving organisational performance, and creating an engaging work environment. Grace held various HR Business Partner roles at FireEye Inc prior to joining Cipher. Grace has international and multi-functional experience and recently spent three years in the Silicon Valley. Grace is CIPD qualified.

Ensure you have the right portfolio to meet your strategic patenting objectives.

Understand who’s doing what by automating patent to technology mapping.

Combine patent and revenue data to determine rational licensing outcomes.

Justify patent budgets to CFOs and others to communicate the impact of your investment.

Automate manual reviews for efficient execution of M&A and licensing transactions.

Be prepared with evidence to create a fast and effective threat assessment.

Assess your portfolio in comparison to other owners through your technology lens.

Identify opportunities to create value through licensing or sale of patent assets.

Track new technologies of today and discover the unknown owners of future disruptive innovation.