With effect from 1 January 2023, Maiwald GmbH, one of Germany’s leading law firms in the field of intellectual property, is expanding its presence in Düsseldorf, both in terms of composition and scope of services: A five-person team led by highly experienced patent attorney Dr Lars Häusler, a patent attorney with in-depth expertise in the fields of chemistry, pharmaceuticals and life sciences, from the law firm Viering, Jentschura & Partner in Düsseldorf, will henceforth be working together with Maiwald GmbH. Maiwald’s Düsseldorf-based patent attorneys have hitherto to a large extent been specialists with an engineering background. With Dr Häusler, who joins Maiwald as a partner, also patent attorney Dr Katja Antovic, patent engineer Dr Vanessa Erdmann and two patent paralegals will be making the move from Viering, Jentschura & Partner to Maiwald.
Dr Lars Häusler is a practising German patent attorney and European patent, trademark and design attorney. He completed his studies in biochemistry at the Ruhr University Bochum, graduating as a biochemist in 2000. He went on to obtain his doctorate (Dr. rer.nat.) in the field of spectroscopic characterisation of protein-protein and protein-ligand interactions at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Physiology in Dortmund. Since 2004, Dr Häusler has been working in intellectual property law with Viering Jentschura & Partner – initially as an associate for six years, and from 2011 as Equity Partner.
Dr Häusler has accumulated many years of expertise in the life sciences, pharmaceuticals and chemistry sectors, including consumer goods. His national and international clients, who are drawn from all of these fields, include universities, start-ups, medium-sized companies and major international corporations. The bulk of Dr Häusler’s work concerns preparing and managing European and German as well as non-European patent applications, advising on patent strategy and portfolio management, and providing opinions on patent infringement, freedom-to-operate (FTO) and patent invalidity issues. Dr Häusler has particular expertise in opposition and appeal proceedings. In recent years, he and his team have represented large pharmaceutical and consumer goods corporations in many such proceedings before the European Patent Office; these included more than 100 oral inter partes proceedings.
Dr Katja Antovic studied biochemistry at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf and completed her studies with a master’s degree. She obtained her doctoral degree (Dr. rer.nat.) in the field of natural product synthesis. Since 2014, she has been working in intellectual property in the fields of life sciences, chemistry and pharmaceuticals. Dr Antovic’s areas of expertise cover patent application and patent infringement proceedings, opposition and nullity proceedings as well as employee inventions.
Dr Vanessa Erdmann studied biology and chemistry at the University of Bielefeld and subsequently obtained her master’s degree in biology at RWTH Aachen. She also completed her doctorate (Dr.rer.nat.) in the field of molecular biology at RWTH Aachen. From 2013 to 2017, Dr Erdmann worked as a research assistant at the Jülich Research Centre. She has been working in the area of intellectual property since 2017. Dr Erdmann specializes in the life sciences, chemistry and consumer goods sectors with the main focus on patent applications.
“We are delighted that Dr Häusler and his close-knit team will soon be bringing their excellent expertise to our firm. These appointments are an important part of our strategy to expand the Düsseldorf office in the fields of chemistry, pharmaceuticals and life sciences,” said partner Dr Lutz Kietzmann.
