Zimmermann & Partner Patentanwälte mbB

The firm: Zimmermann & Partner Patentanwälte mbB is a boutique IP firm located in Germany, with offices in Munich, Berlin and Bamberg. Zimmermann & Partner has grown steadily since it was founded in 1999; it currently has 28 qualified German and European patent attorneys and an overall staff of approximately 90 people. Zimmermann & Partner provides the complete range of IP law-related services, with a particular focus on patent litigation and prosecution.

Areas of practice: 

Litigation: Zimmermann & Partner has successfully handled numerous high profile patent litigation and corresponding nullity proceedings. For many years now, Zimmermann & Partner have been and still are the responsible patent attorneys representing, inter alia, Medtronic, Saint Gobain and Samsung, most visibly in the international dispute against Apple. Our technical expertise is requested by global players not only for German cases but also in the context of cross-border litigation and in foreign jurisdictions. Partners of Zimmermann & Partner have been engaged as Court Experts by various 1st and 2nd instance infringement courts in Germany. This demonstrates Zimmermann & Partner’s expertise as well as the reputation Zimmermann & Partners enjoys among judges at German infringement courts.

Prosecution: With our firsthand experience of litigation, Zimmermann & Partner develops patent portfolios and devises patent prosecution strategies for both international players and well-reputed national companies. We assist our clients from the onset of research and development, over developing IP strategies, drafting patent applications and prosecuting the applications before the competent patent offices up to grant and defend them if patent validity is challenged afterwards.

Opposition: Zimmermann & Partner has a special emphasis on handling opposition cases before the European Patent Office and the German Patent Office/Patent Court, very often in preparation of litigation. We are involved in a high number of oppositions where our clients can rely on our high success rate which stands out clearly from the average results as taken from the official statistics.

Analysis, due diligence and valuation: Zimmermann & Partner is involved in all further kind of client consultation like due diligences; infringement and validity analysis; work-around strategies; drafting and analyzing agreements; and German employee inventor law consultations. With one of our partners having his Ph.D. in patent valuation, Zimmermann & Partner has been a frequent and competent partner of investors, banks and liquidators for the valuation of patent and/or trademark portfolios for many years.

Administration support: We at Zimmermann & Partner take pride in making the administrative exchange with our clients as smooth as possible. Zimmermann & Partner gathered an abundance of experience with numerous standard external administrative software programs such as Anaqua, Tymetrix etc., so as to directly interface with our client’s in-house patent departments. Thereby, we assist, or even completely handle, the internal docketing processes. In addition, we provide very flexible and complex portfolio reporting services as well as generating or programming interfaces with our client’s software as desired.