John Whelan is a partner in the Corporate Department and heads up the IP and Technology group at A&L Goodbody, with a focus on the areas of intellectual property, information technology, telecoms, and commercial contracts. He also heads up our Outsourcing Unit.
On the corporate side John has acted on some of the highest value commercial agreements and outsourcing deals in the IT and communications sector to date, and on the contentious side has acted in many IP cases, including most of the patent trials, that have come before the Irish Commercial Court.
John has spoken at conferences on topics in his areas of specialisation in Dublin, London, Berlin, Hong Kong, Beijing, Bangkok and New York (at the IDA's North American Conference), and on the UK’s Legal Television Network. He is a World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) trained Arbitrator and has a Masters of Commercial Law (LLM) from University College Dublin. John currently serves as a member of the Irish Government's International Content Services Centre taskforce, and was a member of the International Traded Services sub-committee of the Government's Enterprise Strategy Group.
John also co-heads our Silicon Valley representative office, through which the Firm engages with our US West Coast based clients and law firm intermediaries.
He is recommended in a number of international legal directories including PLC Which Lawyer?, Chambers Europe, The Legal 500, European Legal Experts, The International Who’s Who of Business Lawyers and Who's Who Legal. Click here to see what the above publications have said about John and his team.
Before returning to A&L Goodbody as a Partner in 2003, John worked for a number of years with Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in London and Hong Kong.