Judge Kalyan K. Deshpande serves as the Chief Judge for the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). In this role, he leads the PTAB as it conducts post-grant trials, including inter partes reviews, post-grant reviews and derivation proceedings, and as it hears appeals from adverse examiner decisions in patent applications and reexamination proceedings.

I studied physics in Vienna, Austria. For my PhD, I studied diffusion in intermetallic alloys using nuclear methods (neutron scattering). Following this, I worked as an instrument scientist at the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) in Grenoble, France, helping scientists from around the world to carry out quasi-elastic neutron scattering experiments. I then moved into industrial research at the French tyre company Michelin. There, I studied rubber mixing phenomena in internal mixers and coordinated a European research programme in which industry and academia collaborated to optimise rotor geometry using computer simulation. I then became an in-house patent attorney at Michelin, qualifying as a European and French patent attorney. Since 2014, I have been a technical member of the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office (EPO), specialising in mechanics. The board deals with appeals from applicants whose patent applications have been refused, as well as appeals against decisions of the EPO's opposition divisions. My board mainly deals with cases concerning security elements for banknotes and passports, printing (including 3D printing), and the transformation of plastics (e.g. extrusion and blow moulding).

Nina Korjus has served as Chairperson of the Fourth Board of Appeal of the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) since January 2022, after joining the Boards of Appeal as a member in February 2021. Before joining the EUIPO, she served as a judge at the Finnish Market Court from 2010, where she was also a member of the management board from 2018 and Head of Department from 2019. Her work at the Market Court covered, among other areas, intellectual property rights, particularly trade marks, as well as competition law, public procurement, unfair competition and consumer law. Earlier in her career, she worked for eight and a half years as référendaire at the General Court of the European Union, focusing especially on Community trade mark and competition law cases. She also served for four years at the European Law Unit of the Finnish Ministry of Justice, most recently as Counsellor of Legislation, where she contributed to Finland’s positions before the Court of Justice of the European Union and prepared advisory opinions on EU law. She holds a Master’s degree in European Community Law from the College of Europe in Bruges. She has published on trade mark and competition law and has participated in several EUIPO and judicial cooperation initiatives.