Malcolm Royal

Malcolm Royal (25 April 1941 – 21 October 2006) was an Australian patent and trade mark attorney and intellectual property law educator.

Education and career Royal was born in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond. He graduated from Footscray Technical College (now part of Victoria University) with a Diploma in Applied Chemistry in 1958. After graduating, he worked as the Australian Patent, Trade Mark and Designs Office in Canberra, Australia as an Examiner of Patents. Malcolm loved education. While still at the Patent Office, he began a Training Office in Patent Law. In 1964, he left the Patent Office and joined the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation to work in their Patent Licensing Section. His role there was to assist in the commercialisation of inventions developed by scientists and engineers, many of them of world prominence, who worked with or for CSIRO.

Royal joined the Australian patent attorney firm Phillips Ormonde & Fitzpatrick in 1970, and qualified as a registered patent attorney in 1971 and became a partner in 1972. He became managing partner of the firm in 1990 and held this position until 2005. He was a member of the Advisory Board of the Graduate Program in Intellectual Property Law at the University of Melbourne from 2000 to 2003; a Member of the Intellectual Property Advisory Board at Monash University from 2001; and a member of the Singapore Patent Attorney Qualifying Examination Committee from 2002 to 2005.

When the Australian Government reviewed the training and professional qualification regimes for Australian Patent and Trade Mark Attorneys, Royal was involved in making (and having adopted) many of the changes as a member of each of the Professional Standards Board for Patent and Trade Marks Attorneys, the Advisory Council for Industrial Property and the Intellectual Property Working Party for Federal Government Innovation Summit from 2000. Malcolm also played a significant role in establishing the IPTA Academy of Education.

Personal life

Royal married Margaret (Maggie) Lizst in 1964. His recreational interests included trail-bike riding, windsurfing and golf. He died of brain cancer and was survived by his wife and three daughters.