About

Upon qualifying as a solicitor in January 2009, Gemma Neylon joined the Irish and UK roll of solicitors, specialising in technology, IP and commercial law. She also qualified as an Irish and European Trade Mark Attorney in 2010. During time at Mason Hayes & Curran, in training and in practice, she published legal articles in various publications and continued to demonstrate her exceptional knowledge and legal and business education, including an LLM and an Executive MBA from Smurfit Business School UCD completed in 2016. As well as working at OpenJaw, Neylon acts as a guest lecturer at the Law Society of Ireland in the certificate in commercial contracts, the in-house diploma and the diploma in IP and technology law. She has been a member of the Law Society’s Curriculum Development Unit from 2011 to 2019. OpenJaw’s t-retail platform provides internet booking solutions to airlines and online travel agents, tailored to their specific requirements. The surge in online retailing has resulted in increasingly complex software requirements from OpenJaw’s customers, who include British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Air Miles, Aeroplan, Hainan Airlines, China United Airlines, Sichuan Airlines, Shenzhen Airlines, Chengdu Airlines, Tibet Airlines and Color Line. OpenJaw has moved from a software licence offering, to a hosted, managed, ‘software as a service’ offering. The legal team’s contract negotiations process has, therefore, adapted to become more customised and partnership-focused. Neylon has introduced KPIs for the legal team which feed into a company-wide balanced scorecard. She highlights that, ‘this allows the legal team to quantify its contribution, not only to its own goals, but also to those of the company as a whole. This is important in order to demonstrate, in a concrete manner, the value which the legal team brings to the company’. Over the course of her time at OpenJaw, her team has successfully incorporated three new subsidiary companies in Hong Kong, Krakow and Dalian China. Together with the office in Dublin, Madrid and Galway, this brings OpenJaw’s regional offices to six. In the first quarter of 2019, OpenJaw successfully negotiated a long-term agreement with All Nippon Airways, the largest airline in Japan. Neylon identifies that ‘our business is becoming more Asia-focussed. We are seeing a growing demand for China-centric solutions, with the travel demands of China growing exponentially year on year. We have captured this opportunity by, firstly, entering into an Alliance Agreement with TravelSky Technology, China’s Global Distribution System, which later led to the successful merger between OpenJaw and TravelSky in 2016’. The company has entered into several new agreements with Chinese airlines in the past three years, including China United Airlines, Sichuan Airlines, Shenzhen Airlines, Hainan Airlines and Chengdu Airlines.