Working with our Munich Office

From Munich we offer the full range of patent, trade mark and design services, including drafting, prosecution, oppositions and appeals, dispute resolution, IP strategy consulting and portfolio management.

Our Munich base not only enhances our ability to service our EU-based clients, but also our numerous international clients. In addition to seamlessly continuing to provide trade mark and design services at the EUIPO following Brexit, we can also now provide our clients with services focussed on German national rights, representing our clients directly before the German Patent and Trade Mark Office (DPMA), and the German Federal Patent Court. Mewburn Ellis is one of a small number of firms in Europe that is capable of representing clients in this way, and this has been extremely well received by our clients.

Our Munich office is a fully operational Mewburn Ellis office. We have invested in it heavily, and we have worked hard to grow it from the ground up. We are proud to say that our Munich team has increased to a significant size, and we now have 16 colleagues permanently based in our Munich office. We intend to expand further too.

Led by partner Tanis Keirstead, the Munich team currently includes four partners. In addition to Tanis there are two German patent attorney partners and one German trade mark partner. We also have four qualified attorneys together with a number of highly skilled German paralegals “Patentanwaltsfachangestellte”) who work alongside them to offer a high quality and stable service for clients looking for EUIPO, DPMA and EPO services.

As such, our Munich team include patent specialists who work across the engineering, life sciences and chemistry technical fields; as well as experienced trade mark attorneys with expertise across all aspects of German, European and international trade mark law.

The Munich team work closely and effectively with UK based colleagues to ensure our clients benefit from the entire depth and breadth of expertise available within Mewburn Ellis.

In recent years, the cost of filing and prosecuting applications at the EPO has risen. Together with the relatively strict examination at the EPO, many international applicants are now looking to the national route instead of the EPO - in particular, they are looking at filing UK and German patent applications instead of EP applications. At Mewburn Ellis we are extremely well placed to service this renewed interest in the national route.

We offer a one-stop shop for filing and prosecuting UK and German national patent applications. Further, our integrated way of working means that our clients benefit greatly from our UK and German attorneys working closely with one another on related cases across the portfolio. On the one hand, our integrated approach leads to appreciable cost benefits for our clients, resulting from streamlined advice and simpler lines of communication. On the other hand, it leads to a more harmonised approach in the management of their UK and German patent portfolios, which ultimately strengthens our clients’ IP position in the marketplace.