Working with our Munich Office

In 2017 we opened our first office in mainland Europe – in Munich, Germany. This represented an important step in the expansion of our IP services and has further cemented our position as one of Europe’s leading specialist IP firms.

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.

Read our Blogs

Turning the Tide with Wastewater: Nature Based Solutions for a Thirstier World

by Peter Kenda

Water scarcity is forcing governments and industries to rethink how we manage one of our most overlooked resources: wastewater. Today, more than 80% of the world’s wastewater is still released ...

Patenting Quantum at the European Patent Office: when broad claims can become a risk

by Johannes Biniok

Suppose a quantum computer solves a fluid dynamics optimisation problem, outputting a bit string for which a customer pays good money. Is the bit string itself a “product”? Most people might ...

From Chatbots to Reasoning Machines: the Next Phase of AI Innovation

by Richard Johnson

When Microsoft announced MAI-Thinking-1 in June 2026, it framed the model not merely as another chatbot, but as a “reasoning model” built for software engineering, mathematics and enterprise ...

UPC Weekly - Inventive step at the UPC – mere aggregation of features?

by Matthew Naylor

UPC Weekly brings you timely, thoughtful and joined-up insight into the evolving landscape of patent litigation at the Unified Patent Court. 2026 Week 30 Something that crops up a lot at the EPO is ...

Dr Tim Lu: “We can programme computers. Why can't we do that in biology?”

by Richard Clegg

Dr Tim Lu is a pioneer in synthetic biology. He and his team are editing immune cells to upgrade the way they detect disease. His method introduces computer logic gate thinking, where cells ...

Commercialisation of Quantum Magnetometry in Space: ESA’s Selection of a Diamond-Based Sensing Consortium

by Urs Ferber

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) recent selection of a Honeywell Aerospace-led consortium, comprising Honeywell, Quantum Brilliance, and Jagiellonian University, marks a further notable step toward ...

Our Growing Team

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 over 15 colleagues permanently based in our Munich office. We intend to expand further too.

Led by partner Tanis Keirstead, the Munich team currently includes five partners. In addition to Tanis there are three German patent attorney partners and one German trade mark partner. We also have three 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.

Open pages of Guide to the Unitary Patent and Unified Patent Court

Guide to the Unitary Patent and the Unified Patent Court

This is a significant change that has different implications depending on business goals as well as your sector and size of business.

Find out more detail about the Unitary Patent and Unified Patent Court with our detailed guide. This covers a summary overview of both as well as details around costs and processes to obtain a unitary patent and a comparison of pros and cons.

A Harmonised Approach

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.