Meissner, Bolte & Partner GbR

Meissner Bolte is one of Germany’s leading law firms specialising in intellectual property, and provides comprehensive legal services covering all aspects of industrial property rights – in particular with regard to trademark protection and litigation. As one of the largest specialist IP firms in Germany, Meissner Bolte further boasts an in-house litigation department supporting its patent and trademark attorneys and associated specialists.

Meissner Bolte was first established in Bremen in 1908; in 1984 the firm opened a second office in Munich, close to the main sites of the European Patent Office and the German Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA). Meissner Bolte has a further five offices in Germany, ensuring and maintaining close links with our local clients, as well as offices in the United Kingdom, Oslo and Alicante. Our international offices allow us to directly represent clients before the UK Patent Office, as well as being very close to the seat of the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market for all Community design and trademark work.

Prosecution, litigation and licensing lie at the core of Meissner Bolte's business and services, with our patent and trademark attorneys and in-house attorneys at law bringing their expertise to bear on the complete range of IP protection. Each of Meissner Bolte‘s patent attorneys is university qualified in a scientific or engineering discipline, with most having an associated master’s degree and many also holding a doctorate. Furthermore, around half of the partners and attorneys hold the LLM qualification. Meissner Bolte is fully competent to represent clients in all technical subject areas, and has teams of competence specialising in:
• physical sciences;
• mechanical engineering;
• electronics and electrical engineering;
• computer science and information technology;
• chemistry; and
• biotechnology.

These teams of competence comprise patent attorneys and at least one attorney from Meissner Bolte’s litigation department, in order to ensure that the enforcement perspective is always considered and that the commercial exploitation of IP rights takes centre stage.

Meissner Bolte is proud to offer its fully fledged litigation department with over a dozen legally qualified litigators. Each of our litigators is a certified IP specialist and handles over 50 infringement proceedings a year before the competent German and European IP courts. As a result of their extensive experience, our litigators are conversant with the house rules of each of the major IP courts in Germany and know how to exploit these rules to our clients’ advantage.

In order to support our international clientele, Meissner Bolte has a complete native English-speaking group based in Munich and within easy reach of the DPMA, in addition to our office in the United Kingdom. The group directly represents many of our international clients before the relevant offices, as well as providing English language expertise across the whole range of our legal services. With IP cases often hinging on the correct interpretation of a complex legal text or on a list of goods and services, Meissner Bolte’s native Englishspeaking attorneys ensure that we can provide the best advice to our clients for cases in English as well as in German.

Germany lies at both the economic and geographic centre of Europe. Literally dozens of international flights leave the airports of Munich, Frankfurt, Berlin and Hamburg daily, ensuring that we are never more than 24 hours away from any of our clients or foreign associates.