About

Joerg Dreyhsig is vice president for patents for medical instruments company Fresenius Medical Care, which has a turnover of $14bn and has 86,000 employees. Dreyhsig focuses on the areas of registration, defence and IP enforcement, including the defence against law suits brought by third parties regarding alleged infringements. Dreyhsig has witnessed how Fresenius developed from a larger mid-cap company into a world leader in its field and a DAX30 company, demanding a continuous adjustment in terms of patent work. One of his major achievements is that due to increased professionalism, a wide range of matters are now being handled in-house, but he points out that the ‘higher level of competency also leads to more success when working with law firms’. Career highlights have been the enforcement of nullity or substantial limitation to numerous European IP rights of competitors, while at the same time ‘the proprietary protection of our own products has been significantly increased over the years’. One of the major challenges has been ‘preserving the company’s room to act even under difficult circumstances’. He enjoys the ‘international and continually evolving nature of the legal field’ fuelled by new legislation. ‘The new unitary patent as well as the unified patent court will present exciting new challenges’. Law firms should ‘avoid overburdening themselves with work and sacrifice quality; a competent client recognises this and acts accordingly’.