Juges légalement qualifiés

Klaus Grabinski studied law at the Universities of Trier, Geneva and Cologne. He passed the 1st and 2nd state examination in 1988 and 1992. Since November 2022, Klaus Grabinski serves as President of the Court of Appeal and chairperson of the Presidium of the Unified Patent Court.  

Peter Blok is a professor in the Center for Intellectual Property Law of Utrecht University. He holds the Patent law chair.

Emanuela Germano, born in Torino (Italy), on 29.03.1956, is graduated in 1979 from the Law Faculty of the University of Turin with a mark of 110/110, cum laude and honourable mention, with a dissertation on criminal law.  

M. Emmanuel Gougé a été nommé juge à la Cour d'appel de la JUB en 2024, où il siège à la Chambre 1 en tant que juge qualifié sur le plan juridique. 

Rian Kalden graduated at Leiden University and finished a Master (including Intellectual and Industrial Property law at LSE) at Londen University. She started her career joining the Amsterdam Bar with the law firm Stibbe, where she practised for almost 11 years.

April 2000 - Doctor Juris, Freiburg Law School. Doctoral thesis: “Die anfängliche und nachträgliche Übersicherung bei revolvierenden Globalsicherheiten“.

Ingeborg Simonsson graduated from Stockholm University in 1993, specializing in intellectual property law. She holds an LLM degree in European business law from the University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands. She has been a full time judge in Swedish courts since 2008, addressing all types of patent cases on a regular basis, as well as intellectual property law cases and civil litigation cases.

Florence BUTIN graduated in civil law and has been serving in the French judiciary system for 25 years, successively as a public prosecutor and in the French ministry of justice where she was notably in charge of ethical issues, conduct, disciplinary proceedings and human resources. She joined the Paris court of first instance in 2012, and from this time onwards her functions were definitively oriented towards civil and economic litigation, first at the social chamber - in charge of collective labor disputes and consumer law - and later at the intellectual property chamber.

Peter Agergaard graduaded with a Master of Laws from the University of Copenhagen. In 2020, he has been appointed as a judge at the Maritime and Commercial Court in Denmark.

Appointed as a French judge in 2005, I have been a civil judge in intellectual and industrial property matter, dealing with patents, trademarks, industrial design, models, and unfair competition in the first instance Court of Paris for five years.

Dirk Böttcher is the presiding judge at the Regional Court in Mannheim, 14th Civil Chamber (patent and antitrust chamber). 

Mr. Brinkman finished his chemistry degree in 1993, specializing in biochemistry, and a law degree in 1995 at Utrecht University in The Netherlands. After joining the bar that same year as a solicitor/barrister in Amsterdam focusing on patents and regulatory affairs, he was appointed judge at the Court of The Hague, IP department in 2002. He became a senior judge in 2007. He has been involved in many patent and other IP cases and speaks regularly on international conferences. He is co-editor of a leading Dutch IP magazine (BIE).

Hon. Paolo Catallozzi is currently a judge at the Supreme Court of Italy, assigned to the first civil chamber, and ordinarily deals with cases in the field of intellectual property and competition law, as well as banking, corporate and bankruptcy law.

Graduated from Strasbourg Law University and from French National Judiciary School, Carine Gillet has always been appointed as a judge in civil matters, since 1993. She dealt with IP cases in Tribunal de Grande Instance de Bobigny before 2009 (and the specialization of the French courts ) and spent seven years at the Third First Instance Paris Court, specialized in IP matters, from 2014 to 2021. She has been working for French National Judiciary school’s International Department, in IP matters.

Judge Granata sits on the Court of Appeal of Antwerp (Belgium)(IP Chamber) and at the Benelux Court of Justice (Luxembourg)(Second Chamber – Appeals against decision of the Benelux Office for Intellectual Property).  Further, he is the President of the Disciplinary Board of the Institute of Belgian Patent Agents.

Professor Dr. Maximilian Haedicke, LL.M. (Georgetown) is the Chair for Intellectual Property and Competition Law at Albert-Ludwigs-University in Freiburg, where he has been tenured since 2005. He was previously an assistant professor at Max-Planck-Institute for Foreign and International Copyright, Patent and Competition Law in Munich.

2020-   Judge at Harju County Court (first instant)

2012-2020          Deputy Secretary General, Ministry of Justice

1999 – 2012        Judge at Harju County Court

1995 – 1999        Legal adviser and trainee for judge, Tallinn City Court

Stefan Johansson is a Senior Judge at Stockholm District Court, where he currently works as Head of Division 3. He has been a judge at Stockholm District Court since 2013. This court of first instance has exclusive competence on patent cases in Sweden.

1986: Studies of law (University Heidelberg)

1992: First State Exam

1995: Second State Exam

1995: Appointment as judge (stages at the Local Court Mannheim and at the Regional Court Mannheim)

1996: Doctorate (University Heidelberg)

1999: Secondment to the Ministry of Justice in Stuttgart

Anna-Lena Klein is a legally qualified judge at the Milan section of the central division of the Unified Patent Court and Presiding Judge at the Regional Court Munich I. 

After studying chemistry in Ulm and Freiburg and law in Bonn, Ms Klepsch began working as a judge at the Regional Court in Düsseldorf in 2001. She has been working in patent law since 2002 and in 2013 took over as presiding judge of the 4c. Civil Chamber, which was newly established at that time

Marije Knijff finished her law degree in 2003 at Leiden University in The Netherlands. 

Margot holds an LLM as well as BSc (Chemistry) and MSc (biochemistry) degrees, all from Leiden University. Since 2014 she is a (patent) judge at the District Court The Hague. Before she worked as an (IP) lawyer in private practice in the Netherlands and as a consultant in international environments on three continents in the private sector and with (supra)national organizations.

András Kupecz holds an LLM in private law from Amsterdam University and an MSc from Utrecht University with focus on molecular biology. 

He was active as a European patent litigator, dually qualified as a lawyer and a European patent attorney, before taking up his duties at the UPC.

Camille Lignieres joined the Judiciary in 1994 after having graduated in Political Science and Private Law. She was in charge of civil, commercial and enforcement law matters for 19 years. In 2013, she joined the Paris Court of First Instance, in the Chamber specialising in Intellectual Property law, where she chaired as Presiding judge of a 3 judge-panel. In 2019, she was appointed at the Paris Court of Appeal, in the Economic Law Chamber, in charge of Competition and Distribution Law disputes.
Camille Lignieres is currently a Legally Qualified Judge at UPC Paris local Division.

Working experience:

Judge since 1997.

From 2009 to 2014, Commerce Court judge with jurisdiction over Intellectual Property cases.

From 2014 to 2020, head of the Court of North Lisbon.

From 2020 to 2022, judge at the Intellectual Property in Lisbon with national jurisdiction (created in 2012).

Since September of 2022, judge at the Appeal Court, in Lisbon - Intellectual Property and Competition division.

My professional path in judicial matters (t.i. at courts) started with traineeship of two years in accordance with the Lawyers' State Examination Act. After my Bar Exam, I was a Judicial Expert in the field of Commercial and Company Law for almost three years.

To be added

Tobias Pichlmaier is Presiding Judge at the District Court in Munich.

In 2000 he started as a judge at the District Court in Munich (Chamber for Patent Litigation). From 2001 to 2004 he worked in the Copyright Department of the Federal Ministry of Justice in Berlin. In 2004 he was public prosecutor at the public prosecutor’s office in Munich.

Andrea Postiglione studied law at the University of Rome and at the University of Hamburg. He qualified as a lawyer in 1995. He entered the judiciary in 2000.

2013 –

Judge at the Market Court

2005 – 2013

Attorney-at-law, Castrén & Snellman Attorneys-at-law

2002 – 2004

Legal Counsel, Ernst & Young (EY Law)

1997 – 2002

Since 2021 Judge at Hanseatic Higher Regional Court of Hamburg (Hanseatisches Oberlandesgericht Hamburg), 5th Civil Panel (Copyrights, Trademarks, Unfair Competition)

2019 - 2021 Judge at District Court Hamburg (Landgericht Hamburg), 10th division (Copyrights, Designs)

I have been appointed judge in 2001 an I´m working since 2014 at the Higher Regional Appeal Court in Vienna. Since almost 8 years I´m a member of the only panel, which is responsible for all patentee and trademark cases in Austria in second instance. I publish on labour and social law topics,  I´m the Head of the Patient Arbitration Board of the Chamber of Doctors Niederösterreich since 2009 and a examining commissioner for the bar and notary examinations since 2016.

Bérénice Thom studied law at the University of Trier where she also received a doctorate in law in 2009. After passing the second state legal examination in Düsseldorf she started her career as an attorney in an IP law firm with a focus on patent litigation in 2009. She entered the judicial service of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia in 2011. 

Ronny Thomas has been a judge at the Local Division Düsseldorf and Member of the Presidium since November 1st, 2022. Prior to his appointment, he served as Deputy Chairman of the 2. Civil Senat at the Higher Regional Court of Düsseldorf, which is responsible for patent matters and headed by Prof. Dr. Thomas Kühnen.

François Thomas completed his law studies in 1993 at the Bordeaux University. Between 1996 and 1998 he attended the National School of Magistrates, and became shortly after a civil judge at the Court of First Instance in Lille.

Dr. Tochtermann studied Law and Chemistry at the University of Heidelberg from which he graduated in 2001. He was a Visiting Scholar sponsored by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation at both the Dispute Resolution Institute, Hamline University, St. Paul (MN), USA as well as the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, Cambridge (MA), USA (2005/2006), where he worked on his comparative Ph.D. on “The Independence and Impartiality of the Mediator” (University of Heidelberg, summa cum laude, 2008).

Ulrike Voß studied law in Trier, where she also completed her legal traineeship, which included periods in Maastricht and Luxembourg. She entered the judicial service of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in 1998. She initially worked in various civil and criminal chambers and, from 2004, in the patent litigation chambers of the Düsseldorf Regional Court. In 2008 she was appointed presiding judge at the Düsseldorf Regional Court.

Daniel Voß studied law in Göttingen and Münster. 

Alima Zana has worked since 1999 as a civil judge at the Tribunal of Milan, where she has been assigned to the Court of First Instance for the Enterprises. She is specialised in IP law and competition law and has acted as rapporteur in many cases related to both European and National Patents.

Date of birth 07/06/1967;  Nationality Bulgarian;

Presiding judge at the Administrative Court Sofia, judge  rank “ Judge at the Supreme Court of Cassation and the  Supreme Administrative Court“;

Chair of the Bulgarian Judges Association;

Dr. Zigann is of German nationality, a (designated) legally qualified judge at the Court of First Instance of the Unified Patent Court, Munich Local Division, and Presiding Judge at the Munich Higher Regional Court. There he is heading the 38th Civil (IP) Senate since November 2022.