4th Global Patent Litigation FORUM

Dr. Dr. Jochen Herr, LL.M., is managing partner of Finnegan's Munich office. Named as an "IP Star" and "Patent Star" in Germany by Managing Intellectual Property (MIP) and recognized for his practice by Intellectual Asset Management (IAM), Jochen is one of the rare lawyers in Germany admitted as an attorney at law, a German patent attorney, and a European patent attorney. Jochen has over 20 years of experience in patent litigation proceedings and is admitted to practice before all German patent infringement courts, the German Federal Patent Court, the German Patent and Trade Mark Office (DPMA), the European Patent Office (EPO), and the Unified Patent Court (UPC).

Dr. Matthias Zigann is a designated legally qualified judge at the Unified Patent Court (Local Division Munich) and Presiding Judge at the Munich Higher Regional Court. There he is heading the 38th Civil Senate since November 2022. From December 2012 to October 2022, he presided over the 7th (Patent) Division of the Munich Regional Court I. Prior to his appointment as presiding judge he was seconded to serve as a research associate with the Xth Civil (Patent) Senate of the German Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe for three years. Dr. Zigann is i.a. co-editor and co-author of the Beck Online Commentary UPC (to go online end of 2023).

Graham Ashley is a former chairman of a mechanics BA and member of the EBA. He has a background in metallurgy and holds a PhD in corrosion science from Cambridge. He qualified as a barrister in 1996 and was a member of the committee for the EQE for patent attorneys (C-Paper: Opposition). He is currently involved in training national judges in patent law and was recently appointed as a part-time technical judge in the UPC.

Dr Kemal Bengi-Akyürek was Chair of the EPO Board of Appeal 3.5.03 from December 2019 to November 2023 and, since 1 December 2023, has been Chair of Board 3.5.05, which is now responsible for the expanded technical spectrum of telecommunications, automation systems, mobile devices, acoustic devices (hearing aids), transport systems, and AI-based biomedical systems. He is also a member of the Enlarged Board of Appeal, the extended Presidium, the Committee for the revision of the Rules of Procedure of the Boards of Appeal (RPBA 2020), and Chair of the Advisory Committee on the application of the Code of Conduct of the Boards of Appeal. He also chairs the AI Group of the EPO Boards of Appeal.

Since 2020 Klaus Bacher is the presiding judge of the 10th Civil Senate of the German Federal Court of Justice, this so-called Patent Senate being primarily responsible for patent cases. Until then he was also a member of the Antitrust Senate. Dr Bacher has dealt with IP and antitrust law since 1995 in the patent litigation chamber of the Mannheim Regional Court and since 2006 in the relevant appeal panel of the Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court. From 2000 to 2003 he was a research assistant at the 10th Civil Senate. In 2009, Dr Bacher was appointed judge at the Federal Court of Justice and in 2016, he was appointed deputy chairman of the 10th Civil Senate. Dr Bacher is, among other things, co-author of the 'Benkard'- Commentaries on the German Patent Law. Since 2022 he is guest professor at Tongji University, Shanghai.

Judge Schön is Presiding Judge of the 7th Civil Chamber at the Regional Court Munich I since 2023. He works in the field of patent law since 2008. During his career he was seconded to the Federal Patent Court and to the Supreme Court of Germany (as a research assistant).

Dr Hubertus Schacht is the Presiding Judge of the 21st Civil Chamber of the Munich Regional Court, which specialises in patent and utility model disputes. Previously, he was a member of the Patent Senate (6th Civil Senate) of the Munich Higher Regional Court, Deputy Presiding Judge of the 21st Civil Chamber of the Munich Regional Court, as well as a Legal Officer in the Patent Division of the Federal Ministry of Justice in Berlin, where he was involved in the work on the Unified Patent Court. Dr Schacht is a co-author of the latest edition of the standard commentary on patent law, "Benkard". He also publishes and speaks regularly, in particular on questions of patent and utility model law.

Tilmann Büttner is a presiding judge at the Düsseldorf Regional Court and heads one of the patent divisions since 2024. He has been serving at the Düsseldorf Regional Court since April 2007. Tilmann Büttner has gained extensive experience in IP matters and patent law; until 2017 he served as an associate judge in the court's other patent divisions.

Marc is Managing Director and Principal IP Counsel at Tencent Europe. He is qualified as European, German and Chinese Patent Attorney and UPC representative. Marc has 10+ yrs of professional experience at leading global tech companies and top law firms in Europe & China. He has been involved in various IP litigation cases in both private practice and industry roles, including several patent infringement and invalidation proceedings in China (CNIPA, Beijing IP Court and Shenzhen Middle Court). As Principal IP Counsel at Tencent, he is responsible for corporate-wide IP portfolios and disputes in the EMEA area. He graduated in physics at Technical University Munich and has a PhD in semiconductor quantum electronics.

Dylan Li is Huawei's Head of European IPR Department. Prior to this position, he was the Head of Huawei 2012 & New Technology IPR Department, managing Wi-Fi, multimedia and other patent portfolios and related IP matters. With his long-term experience with Huawei, Dylan leads Huawei's various IP practices, including patent transactions, patent alliance and consortium, patent licensing and litigations, IP strategy, policy, and M&A.

Joachim is a member of BOSCH's global IP expert team and is responsible for enforcing intellectual property rights, copyrights, and trade secrets. In this context, he handles proceedings worldwide and also attends trade shows in several jurisdictions to enforce the rights of the BOSCH Group. Joachim has been active in IP litigation for over 22 years now, during which he has handled proceedings in several European countries, the USA, Mexico, Brazil, South Korea, Japan, and China.

As Merck Group's Head of Patents and Scientific Services, Kathrin is also responsible for coordinating the pharmaceutical company's global patent litigation disputes. She is a European Patent Attorney and a European Patent Litigator.

Dr Markus Gruber is a Swiss and European Patent Attorney and has been working for Novartis for over 20 years, since 2022 as a Head of IP for Solid Tumors and Radioligand Therapy. Prior to that, he worked as Global Franchise Head Targeted Oncology, R&D IP. Dr Gruber has acquired a diploma for patent litigation in Europe and holds a Ph.D. in molecular biology from ETH Zurich.

Dr Sabrina Duschner is Vice President Patent Litigation Strategy at Fresenius Kabi, a global healthcare company. Her team focuses on risk assessment and minimisation strategies for the pharmaceutical and clinical nutrition sectors, with an emphasis on direct representation in opposition and appeal proceedings before the EPO. Dr Duschner has worked in intellectual property since 2007, including in the patent departments of Procter & Gamble and Merz Pharmaceuticals. She studied at the University of Mainz, obtained her doctorate in the field of the physical chemistry of polymers and has been an European Patent Attorney since 2012.

Ralf is the Head of European Patent Litigation at Google. He manages Google's patent litigation docket in Europe, including contentious cases before the national courts and the Unified Patent Court. He is also a lecturer in patent law at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg.

Juliane is the Lead IP Litigation Counsel Europe at ZTE, a global leading provider of information and communication technology solutions, in Düsseldorf, Germany. She is responsible for ZTE's IP litigation, including IP Strategy and Policy throughout Europe. Since 2015 she defined the litigation strategy of ZTE in Europe and was involved in a large number of cases that specified the case law on FRAND matters in Europe. Before joining ZTE, Juliane was a senior associate at the international law firm Hogan Lovells (2008-2015) specialised in patent litigation. She studied law at the University of Halle/Saale, Germany and received an LLM degree from the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Juliane is a registered lawyer at the Düsseldorf Bar and is fluent in German and English.

Thomas Dreiser is a German qualified lawyer and working for Huawei in Munich. He is responsible for Huawei's European patent licensing and patent litigation projects. He focuses on Standard Essential Patents in the telecommunications sector and all FRAND related issues. Prior to joining Huawei, Thomas worked as an external attorney specializing in patent litigation, IP and IT law, and he, inter alia, represented a company in one of the largest German SEP litigation campaigns in the telecommunications sector in recent years. He holds law degrees from the Universities of Munich, Duesseldorf and Jena, and he has more than 10 years of experience in the field of IP and patent law. Thomas also teaches IP law at the University of Weimar.

Elliot has been advising Global companies on IP strategies for almost 26 years, the last 16 of these from Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai, where he currently lives and works. He specialises in China patent and trade secret litigation. He represents Europe's leading companies in enforcing their patents and utility models and over the last 7 years or so has developed a reputation for defending them against patent infringement lawsuits brought by Chinese competitors.