Maria Fernandez Marques entered the trademark world more than 30 years ago and never left. After the early years in private practice in Brazil she started her in-house career in the mid 90’s in Germany.
Maria has spent the last quarter of century in senior roles in the trademark departments of various pharmaceutical companies, small and large. She has been a member of the Management Committee of the Pharmaceutical Trade Marks Group for the last twenty years. Currently she is the Head of Legal Brand Protection Rights Management at Novartis in Basel, Switzerland, where she supervises the entire spectrum of activities relating to trademark protection and enforcement, copyrights and domain names, including complex litigation matters resulting from online and offline infringements. She holds legal and business management degrees from Universities in Brazil, Germany and the UK.