Context: Thus far, the Unified Patent Court (UPC) has appointed many judges but has had only one resignation to report (May 31, 2024 ip fray article).
What’s new: Today the UPC announced that eight new technically qualified judges (TQJs) have been appointed (June 24, 2024 UPC press release). Six of them are Germans. They have yet to be sworn in. One (German) TQJ resigned as of June 1, 2024.
First, the new appointments by field of technology:
- Electricity and Physics:
- Dr. Torsten Duhme, patent attorney, partner at Witte Weller & Partner (Stuttgart, Germany)
- Dr. Christian Keller, patent attorney, partner at Dr. Keller & Schwertfeger (Landau, Germany)
- Steven Richard Kitchen, patent attorney, partner at COPA (Copenhagen, Denmark)
- Dr. Johannes Mesa Pascasio, patent examiner, Austrian Patent Office (Vienna, Austria)
- Dr. Christoph Norrenbrock, patent attorney, PAVANT (Hamburg, Germany)
- Electricity:
- Michael Quittkat (Germany) (he may be an in-house patent attorney; his name is found on some old patent applications filed by Man Roland Druckmaschinen (Google Patents link))
- Jochen Thomas (Germany) (named as inventor on multiple Qimonda and Infineon patents (Google Patents link))
- Biotechnology:
- Oliver Werner (presumably Dr. Oliver Werner of the German Patent & Trademark Office)
The TQJ who resigned, Juergen (“Jürgen” in German) Tischler, is a judge at the Federal Patent Court of Germany.