Cohausz & Florack

COHAUSZ & FLORACK (C&F) is a law firm founded in 1954 with offices in Düsseldorf and Munich and a team of around 140 people. The firm supports its clients – both international corporations and innovative, medium-sized German companies, some of whom have been clients for decades – in all matters relating to intellectual property and unfair competition. This includes the registration, administration, and licensing of extensive intellectual property portfolios, searches for third-party intellectual property rights, and related freedom-to-operate opinions as well as cooperation agreements. C&F also represents its clients in proceedings over the infringement or the legal status of IP rights. The firm sees itself as a strong partner, advising its clients proactively, individually, and holistically on all IP matters. The 35 patent attorneys and 5 attorneys-at-law boast exceptional technical expertise and work together as an efficient, interdisciplinary team and in a spirit of trust. 

C&F combines knowledge in all technical disciplines under one roof – from mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and ICT to chemistry and life sciences – with the current demands such as environmental technologies or artificial intelligence always playing a role. C&F also has a wealth of experience in IP proceedings in other countries, which include the EU member states and the North American and East Asian G20 countries. For this purpose, the firm harnesses its solid network of partner law firms across the globe. Internally, C&F strives towards the long-term advancement and high-quality training and development of its team members, who are all dedicated to protecting innovation with curious and open minds. In this way, C&F is instrumental in ensuring that companies invest in development, remain competitive, and enrich society with their ideas.

Prosecution: We advise innovative companies comprehensively in the area of prosecution. From the demanding initial registration of property rights up to their grant – we’ll accompany you along the way to reliably protect your ideas. Because we know how: In the last 5 years, we have filed ca. 3,200 patent applications (including 1,600 initial applications) and registered more than 3,300 trademarks. In total, we currently manage around 24,000 patents and 19,000 trademarks.

Litigation: Whether for the enforcement of intellectual property rights or the defense against unjustified claims by third parties, our expertise benefits you in infringement proceedings. We’ll enforce your intellectual property rights in court or defend against unjustified claims by third parties. In doing so, we are also active before the Federal Patent Court, the Federal Court of Justice, and the German Patent and Trade Mark office. Of course, we can also represent you before all other courts in Germany – whether in the case of infringements of patents and utility models, the infringement of trademarks or designs, in contractual matters, or when dealing with potential infringement under competition law. For the past 25 years, we have worked on over 100 new patent nullity suits and infringement proceedings per year. In addition, we take on more than 75 new opposition and appeal proceedings each year. We have drafted well over 4,000 expert opinions on SEPs in total.

Validity proceedings: We stand up for you if your intellectual property rights are attacked. Regardless of whether your property right is being challenged or whether you want to challenge the validity of someone else‘s property right – we’ll support you all the way. We’ll represent you before the Federal Patent Court and the Federal Supreme Court. In the field of trademarks, we have handled almost 2,500 trademark infringement proceedings as well as some 3,500 trademark opposition proceedings for our clients over the past 25 years.

Research: Research always trumps risk: With comprehensive know-how and a variety of tools, we support you in securing your intellectual property rights. In order to identify and minimize risks in conjunction with intellectual property rights for you in good time, we use modern tools and databases that go far beyond standard research. For this purpose, we have a full-time research department with three employees. Based on our research, we can provide you with specific recommendations that will help you to effectively expand your IP strategy.

Patent and trademark monitoring: Well informed and ideally prepared: We’ll keep an eye on the market and the intellectual property rights landscape for you. CFProfile is our personal database that we offer for targeted patent monitoring (www.cfprofile.de). Information on newly published patent applications, patents, and utility models is compiled here and monitored on a regular basis. This allows us to quickly inform you if there are changes in the intellectual property landscape that might affect you. We also provide comprehensive support in trademark monitoring to detect conflicting trademarks and avoid confusion with existing brands. For this we rely on effective tools and search engines. If action is required, we quickly initiate the appropriate measures in close cooperation with you.

Employee inventions: Do you have innovative employees? We’ll show you how to make sensible use of their ideas. We’ll support you in developing a system for managing employee inventions. Together, we’ll develop processes with which you can use and secure the valuable ideas of your employees. We’ll also advise you on implementing potential strategies based on remuneration and other company incentives in order to motivate your employees and encourage them to continue being inventive.

Legal counselling: Whether competition, copyright or IT law, our counselling covers all areas of intellectual property rights protection that are relevant for your company. We’ll advise and represent you in all aspects of competition law, for example, when it comes to asserting claims or assessing the legality of advertising measures. We also provide comprehensive counselling services on IT law matters and copyright issues. In addition, we’ll be happy to support you in the drafting, revision, and negotiation of contracts (especially cooperation and license agreements) and represent your interests in court. We are very familiar with arbitration and are able to act both as party representatives and as arbitrators before German and European institutions. We’ll explore the possibilities of alternative dispute resolution and accompany you through all negotiations, for example, through mediation, arbitration reports, or dispute review boards.

IP strategies: We always take a holistic approach and will support you in successfully positioning yourself and your intellectual property rights in the market as an innovative company. We’ll support you in developing an IP strategy: We’ll analytically derive the potential and possible scope of protection of your innovations already in the initial phases of development. We‘ll do this, for example, in the context of a status quo analysis and by asking the following questions: How is your company positioned? Who are your competitors? And which one of them might possibly hinder the protection of your own products? With the appropriate measures, we can ensure that your innovations remain protected and your market exclusivity secured.

Our technical expertise

Mechanical Engineering: We feel truly at home in mechanical engineering. We have been advising our clients in this area since the firm’s founding – combining a long tradition with deeply rooted expertise. Leading industrial companies have always played a large role in our diverse clientele. These include world market and industry leaders in, for example, process and manufacturing technology, materials processing, automotive engineering, plastics technology, construction, metallurgy, mechatronics, and medical technology. Having such long-standing clients with continuously growing know-how and product portfolios, allows us further strengthen our own expertise and thus our consulting services in the respective technological fields. This concerns, for example, our knowledge of the Internet of Things and other current topics in mechanical engineering. In recent years, we have additionally positioned ourselves even more strongly in processing industries, such as the automotive and automotive supplier industries, as well as in the area of foundry technology.

Electrical engineering: Whether classical electrical engineering or information and communication technology – we have the know-how to ensure that our clients‘ intellectual property is protected. Software is today an integral part of almost all areas of our everyday life – whether in smartphones or cars, at the doctor’s, or in the office. The good news for manufacturers in almost all industries is that many of these software-related inventions can be effectively protected by intellectual property rights. We support our clients in this – and in all other matters relating to Industry 4.0 and the Internet of Things. But we also attend to technical and sometimes highly complex intellectual property rights in other fields of electrical engineering – for example in the fields of electrical energy technology and renewable energies, semiconductor technology and components, circuit technology, control and regulation technology, microsystems technology, and sensor technology.

Chemicals, pharmaceuticals & life sciences: We’ve got the right chemistry. Since the 1990s, we have been serving companies in the chemical, pharmaceutical, and life sciences sectors. When it comes to issues in the areas of pharmaceuticals, inorganic or organic chemistry, polymer chemistry, biochemistry, and biotechnology, we really know what we‘re talking about. For the sometimes large and often transnational procedures in these areas, we put together competent patent attorney teams: all highly qualified experts in their respective fields, who also have a great deal of experience in litigation. With such concentrated competence, we are the right partner for our clients – for example in complex opposition proceedings before the European Patent Office as well as in nullity and infringement proceedings at a national and international level.