Living our values

Care, transparency and commerciality

Our core values are care, transparency and commerciality. At the heart of Baxter IP is a group of attorneys who really care about innovators, their projects and the change that they seek to create. Whether you are a member of in-house counsel for a multinational or a mum-and-dad entrepreneur, you can rest assured that our culture of care is for everyone.

We give back

Baxter IP is a benefactor of the UNSW Founder's Program and provides pro-bono IP advice to their 10X and Health 10X cohorts each year. The Founder's Program supports university students in establishing startups with a focus on social impact. For us, this is a modest but important start to giving back to the community and more generally to STEM education in Australia.

We support Australian Indigenous Causes

We continue the Baxter family tradition of supporting Australian Indigenous causes. Recently, we supported the Nunyara Centre at Officer, Victoria in using trade mark law to stop the indigenous word “Nunyara” from being adopted by a large cannabis company for one of its products.

We continue a philanthropic legacy

64 years ago, John Percy Hamilton Baxter, Chris' great-grandfather, showed how one can use their innovative skills in business enterprise to develop wealth and, in turn, help people in need. The Percy Baxter Charitable Trust which he established is now one of the largest Philanthropic Charitable Trusts in Australia. Chris is closely involved in advising the Trust on a voluntary basis.

We step forwards

Historically, many family foundations give to causes that resonate with them, that have some intersection with the life experience of the trustees or where the family knows people involved in the charitable organisation. This was certainly true for the Baxter Charitable Trusts, and these are all good reasons to give. However, since 2017 and under Chris' and his brother Richard's initiative, the Baxter family started taking what might be described as a more innovative, data-driven approach. This now provides the family with a second layer of information to help the family assess the social impact of distribution decisions.