About

Anette Mellbye has worked at Electromagnetic GeoServices since 2007, where she heads a small legal team of three people. ‘We are a small company of 350 employees working worldwide so a lot of the legal work is performed by outside counsel. Last year we worked in 14 different jurisdictions, and it is impossible to get inside legal competence to cover so widely with the combination of international work and size of company and contracts’. One of Mellbye’s achievements has been to build a corporate social responsibility policy with a yearly report. Anti-corruption training and reporting has also been implemented as an improvement to the security of the company. Having standard procedures for the business to follow has allowed her the time to become involved in the work earlier, assisting in the risk and cost reduction in a number of processes in the company. One of her biggest achievements is winning the patent validity case launched by Schlumberger Holding against two base method patents in EMGS in the European Patent Office (EPO) and the UK patent courts. On what she enjoys most about her role, Mellbye first covers the part that she plays in ‘training on patent law and corporate legal matters’. She also enjoys ‘being part of the executive management and the decision making process. The variation of work and the interaction with many employees of a variety of nationalities makes my role more interesting’.