AI & IP FORUM

Mr. Gramenopoulos is a partner in Finnegan, Henderson's Washington, DC office. He has more than two decades of experience assisting domestic and international clients in the electrical and computer technology fields. Mr. Gramenopoulos is an accomplished patent litigator and strategic IP advisor, handling complex and high-stakes patent matters both in and outside of the courtroom and before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). Recognized by The Legal 500 U.S. and IAM Patent 1000, he is the lead author of the acclaimed international treatise, Global Patent Litigation: How and Where to Win, published by Bloomberg Law.

is chairman of the EPO's Technical Board of Appeal 3.5.06, which deals with computer technology and artificial intelligence, and a member of the Enlarged Board of Appeal. He joined the EPO as an examiner in 1998, was appointed a member of the Boards of Appeal in 2010, and chairman of board 3.5.06 in 2019. Martin studied computer science at the University of Karlsruhe (now KIT) and received a respective PhD from Saarland University. He is a regular speaker and author on patent law issues.

Peter Berg joined Infineon 2017 as VP Intellectual Property in Legal and Patents. He held similar positions in the automotive and food packaging industries at Dräxlmaier and Tetra Pak before. Peter is an Electrical Engineer graduating from TU Dresden in 1994. He spent the early years of his career at Siemens to become a German and European Patent Attorney serving the telecom businesses in various positions, latest as Chief IP Licensing Counsel. Peter serves as board member for the Association of Intellectual Property Experts VPP in Germany.

Andres is a Swiss and European Patent Attorney and currently works as Chapter Lead New Modality IP at Roche which he joined in 2015. He thrives at the crossroads of large language models (LLMs) and IP, exploring how cutting-edge AI can revolutionize the way we navigate patents, trademarks, copyrights, and more. Passionate about leveraging AI to enhance efficiency, accuracy, and decision-making in the IP landscape, he considers himself a humble LLM whisperer - tuning into the nuances of these models while continuously learning alongside them. He is a certified Generative AI Practitioner. Andres earned a Ph.D. in Neurobiology and Neurosciences from the University of Basel.

Michael is Siemens' Head of Corporate Intellectual Property Support since almost 27 years. In this capacity, he is responsible for the digitalisation and automation of patent processes within the Siemens IP Group. As part of this role, Michael coordinated the worldwide consolidation of all patent activities into a 24/7 intranet-based system. He developed and implemented a unified IP platform to connect all internal and external partners involved in the patent process. Michael also supported start-ups in matters related to intellectual property. Behind his responsibilities he is now involved in the IP AI activities by Siemens IP. He holds a German business administration diploma from the University of Passau.

Tobias Haar has been working as a lawyer since 1999. He also holds international degrees in Legal Informatics (LL.M.) and Business Administration (MBA). He initially worked in the Communications, Media & Technology department of the major international law firm Clifford Chance until 2005. Since then, he has been an in-house lawyer and headed the legal departments at Gameforge (Karlsruhe) and Omio (Berlin), among others. Since 2023, he has been General Counsel at the European AI startup Aleph Alpha, based in Heidelberg. He lectures on IT law issues at the Karlsruhe Institute for Technology (KIT) and the Popakademie in Mannheim, among others. He has been publishing IT law articles in iX - the magazine for professional information technology - for over 20 years.

Matthew has been working for over 35 years as a UK Chartered Patent Attorney and European patent attorney. For the first half of his career he was in private practice in central London, working in the fields of telecoms, data processing and microelectronics. In 2007, to learn more about the broader aspects of managing IP in a company, he joined Canon at its European headquarters just outside London in 2007 and became European head of IP in 2016. Since joining Canon Matthew has been involved in oppositions, appeals, and patent litigation in the major European countries, as well as US patent litigation. His IP work also includes aspects of brand management, competition law, anti-counterfeit activities, standardisation activities and contractual IP issues. Matthew is a past president of IP Federation and currently chairs its Trade Committee. He also represents IP Federation on the UK Domestic Advisory Group and is member of the SACEPO Guidelines Working Party. AI & IP policy is a frequent topic in IP Federation, especially when it comes to balancing the interests of the creative industries and AI developers. Married with two children, Matthew's passions outside work are watching football, his ever-expanding collection of wines, and travel, especially to vineyard areas or Japan.

Stephan is since 2020 the Head of IP Strategy and Research with the thyssenkrupp Intellectual Property GmbH which bundles the IP staff of the thyssenkrupp group. Prior to that, he worked as Expert IP Strategy and Research for thyssenkrupp IP. thyssenkrupp IP uses AI regularly for its patent work. Stephan is also member of an industry working group on AI and IP. He has a Master in IP Law and Management and a Master of Science in industrial engineering.
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Marc is since January 2025 Team Lead of Data Analytics & Artificial Intelligence with BASF. Prior to that, he was a senior expert for innovation management and digitalization dealing with, among others, IP intelligence and AI. One of his tasks consists of applying, fine-tuning and adapting LLMs to real business cases for BASF. This includes utilising and applying Generative AI foundation models to business cases in IP, legal, chemistry and technology domain. Marc also built up internal capabilities for internal hosting, pre-training and fine-tuning of LLMs with IP and business data. Within the Patent Documentation Group, he chairs the Digital Experts Community and is Deputy Chair of the Digital IP Taskforce. He earned a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of Darmstadt.

Philipp is since 2021 VusionGroup's Head of IP Management and Regulatory Compliance. In this capacity, he is responsible, i.a. for IP portfolio management, strategic IP planning and innovation process. Prior to his current role, Philipp worked as an IP and Certification Manager for the company and had managed R&D operations projects. Furthermore, he is the chairman of the IoT-Joint Working Group of the Austrian Standards Organisation. Philipp is also the Austrian delegate in the ISO/IEC IoT Working Group on application for electronic labelling systems. He holds a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Leoben as well as a Master in Innovation Management.

Philipp is a European Patent Attorney and works since 2017 as Patent Counsel for Bosch. His tasks include advancing the use of generative AI technologies to enhance patent attorney practices. Furthermore, he is involved in the management and development of a patent portfolio focused on core and applied AI inventions, and he provides strategic advice on patent-related matters. He holds a M.Sc. in electrical and information engineering from the University of Stuttgart.

Thomas is a European Patent Attorney and since 2021 Senior Director and Head of IP Counseling EMEA & APAC with NXP Semiconductors, leading an international team of IP Counsels for partnering with and advising Business, R&D and CTO on transactional and strategic IP matters. He was already with NXP earlier in his career before becoming Chief IP Counsel of WABCO and ZF Group (division "Commercial Vehicle Control Systems") respectively. He earned a Ph.D. in physics from TU Dortmund University.

Maria Sorea leads the Services & Analytics Patenting team at Nokia Technologies and supports and advises internal clients on a wide range of intellectual property matters in the telecommunications field, including invention harvesting, drafting and prosecuting patent applications, worldwide patent portfolio management, overall IP strategy, licensing and litigation. She has over 16 years of experience in patent law and a proven track record of success in patenting technologies in various domains such as computing and software, AI/ML, IoT, security, multimedia. Maria is a European Patent Attorney and a German Patent Attorney and holds a PhD in computer science.

Michaela Wegner is a European and German Patent Attorney and works as Senior IP Counsel with Siemens AG where she began her IP career ten years ago. Michaela counsels various Siemens businesses in all matters of IP for artificial intelligence products and applications, Siemens being one of the top patent applicants among the European companies in the field of AI. She is also a Member of the Committee for Patent and Utility Model Law of the German Patent Attorney Association as well as a member of the Patent and Utility Model Law Special Committee of the German Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property (GRUR). Michaela's academic background is in physics.

Prior to becoming a Patent Attorney Claudia studied and worked in computer science. After completion of her studies she majored in computer science with a minor in medical technology, she received her PhD in the study of artificial intelligence. She has now been working as a patent lawyer in intellectual property law for over 15 years and advises market leading clients in different areas of intellectual property. Claudia has teaching positions at two universities and gives numerous seminars and lectures. Professional experience in her area of expertise is incorporated in the book titled 'Legal Protection for Computer implemented Inventions - A practical guide for Software related Patent Applications' which she wrote together with Ms. Kruspig, formerly director EPA, and which was published by Wolters Kluwer in 2017. In addition to her daily practice, she closely follows the current international developments of patent law in the field of legal protection for software.

Alexander is a UK and European Patent Attorney whose particular technical expertise is in AI and Machine Learning, having studied at the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit. In addition to his EPO oppositions practice, he focuses on helping clients protect their machine learning innovation in health care and TechBio, and he leads Kilburn & Strode's AI practice. Alexander has an MSci in Physics from Imperial College and a PhD in Computational Neuroscience from University College London. He is consistently recognised as leading individual for computer technology by the JUVE Patent UK rankings, a leading IP strategist listed in the IAM Strategy 300 and described by IAM Patent 1000 (2024) as "the go-to expert in the UK for any AI-related matters.

Mr. Molnia is qualified both in the United States and Europe as well as in Germany. His qualifications enable him to represent clients before the European Patent Office, the German Patent and Trademark Office, the German Federal Patent Court, the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) as well as before the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). He has been active in intellectual property since 1994 and is co-founder and partner of df-mp. He heads the firm's strong practices in the electrical and mechanical arts.

Ronja's practice focuses on patent and trade secret litigation. She regularly advises clients on the best strategy for enforcing trade secrets before German courts. Prior to joining Bardehle Pagenberg, Ronja worked in research and teaching at the Chair of Corporate and Intellectual Property Law at the Technical University of Munich, where she wrote her doctoral thesis on the protection of trade secrets in litigation and arbitration proceedings and closely followed the legislative process of the EU Directive on the protection of trade secrets and the German Trade Secret Protection Act. She publishes on various issues related to the protection of trade secrets and patents.

Dr. Marcus von Welser, LL.M., is a German Attorney-at-Law and a Certified IP Specialist at the Munich office of the law firm Vossius & Partner. His areas of expertise are intellectual property law and competition law. He advises, among others, rights holders, software developers, and platform operators on legal issues related to artificial intelligence. He is the author of various publications, including a practical handbook on copyright law.

Daria Kim is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Competition and Innovation (Munich). She holds MA (Indiana University of Pennsylvania), LLM (Munich Intellectual Property Law Center), and Dr iur (University of Augsburg) degrees. Her research focuses on topics at the intersection of law, technology, and society, which include intellectual property law, governance frameworks for medical research in humans, genome editing, artificial intelligence, and access to data within the context of the data economy.