Legally Qualified Court Judges

Klaus Grabinski studied law at the Universities of Trier, Geneva and Cologne. He passed the 1st and 2nd state examination in 1988 and 1992. Since November 2022, Klaus Grabinski serves as President of the Court of Appeal and chairperson of the Presidium of the Unified Patent Court.  

Francoise Barutel graduated from Sciences Po Paris with a master's degree in private law and a master's degree from ESSEC Business School. She joined the Judiciary in 1997 after ten years in marketing and sales' departments of private companies.

Peter Blok is a professor in the Center for Intellectual Property Law of Utrecht University. He holds the Patent law chair.

Emanuela Germano has graduated in 1979 from the Law Faculty of the University of Turin with a mark of 110/110, cum laude and honourable mention, with a dissertation on criminal law. Immediately after graduating, she trained as a solicitor, obtaining the title of lawyer, and working for a number of years as a lecturer in criminal law at the University of Turin.

Rian Kalden graduated at Leiden University and finished a Master (including Intellectual and Industrial Property law at LSE) at Londen University. She started her career joining the Amsterdam Bar with the law firm Stibbe, where she practised for almost 11 years.

Patricia Rombach received her Doctor Juris at Freiburg Law School in 2000 with the Doctoral thesis: “Die anfängliche und nachträgliche Übersicherung bei revolvierenden Globalsicherheiten“.
Between 2018 and 2019, Patricia was the Presiding Judge of the Competition Law Chamber at the Mannheim Regional Court.

Ingeborg Simonsson graduated from Stockholm University in 1993, specializing in intellectual property law. She holds an LLM degree in European business law from the University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands. She has been a full time judge in Swedish courts since 2008, addressing all types of patent cases on a regular basis, as well as intellectual property law cases and civil litigation cases. Before becoming a judge, she did full time research and teaching at Stockholm University, where since 2009 she holds a degree of doctor of European law and associate professor (docent).

Florence Butin graduated in civil law and has been serving in the French judiciary system for 25 years, successively as a public prosecutor and in the French ministry of justice where she was notably in charge of ethical issues, conduct, disciplinary proceedings and human resources. She joined the Paris court of first instance in 2012, and from this time onwards her functions were definitively oriented towards civil and economic litigation, first at the social chamber - in charge of collective labor disputes and consumer law - and later at the intellectual property chamber.

Peter Agergaard graduaded with a Master of Laws from the University of Copenhagen. In 2020, he has been appointed as a judge at the Maritime and Commercial Court in Denmark.

Appointed as a French judge in 2005, Mélanie Bessaud has been a civil judge in intellectual and industrial property matter, dealing with patents, trademarks, industrial design, models, and unfair competition in the first instance Court of Paris for five years.

Edger Brinkman finished his chemistry degree in 1993, specializing in biochemistry, and a law degree in 1995 at Utrecht University in The Netherlands. After joining the bar that same year as a solicitor/barrister in Amsterdam focusing on patents and regulatory affairs, he was appointed judge at the Court of The Hague, IP department in 2002. He became a senior judge in 2007. He has been involved in many patent and other IP cases and speaks regularly on international conferences. He is co-editor of a leading Dutch IP magazine (BIE).

Hon. Paolo Catallozzi is currently a judge at the Supreme Court of Italy, assigned to the first civil chamber, and ordinarily deals with cases in the field of intellectual property and competition law, as well as banking, corporate and bankruptcy law.

Graduated from Strasbourg Law University and from French National Judiciary School, Carine Gillet has always been appointed as a judge in civil matters, since 1993. She dealt with IP cases in Tribunal de Grande Instance de Bobigny before 2009 and spent seven years at the First Instance Paris Court, specialized in IP matters, from 2014 to 2021.

Before his appointment as judge, Mr. Granata was an IP-lawyer/mediator and university assistant at the Catholic University of Law (Louvain, Belgium).

Professor Dr. Maximilian Haedicke, LL.M. (Georgetown) is the Chair for Intellectual Property and Competition Law at Albert-Ludwigs-University in Freiburg, where he has been tenured since 2005. He was previously an assistant professor at Max-Planck-Institute for Foreign and International Copyright, Patent and Competition Law in Munich.

Kai Härmand is a judge at the Harju County Court (First Instant) since 2020. She has worked as Deputy Secretary General of the Estonian Ministry of Justice from  to 2012 to 2020.

Stefan Johansson is a Senior Judge at Stockholm District Court, where he currently works as a Head of Division. He has been a judge at Stockholm District Court since 2013. Since 2016, the exclusive competence also covers administrative appeals from the Swedish Intellectual Property Office on e.g. patents (cf. BoA). Until October 2021, Stefan mainly - almost exclusively - worked on cases relating to intellectual property rights (including patents). Today, he deals with other types of cases too.

Holger Kircher has obtained his Doctorate from the University of Heidelberg in 1996 and has been the Presiding judge at the Regional Court in Mannheim (chamber for patent matters) since 2006.

After studying chemistry in Ulm and Freiburg and law in Bonn, Sabine Klepsch began working as a judge at the Regional Court in Düsseldorf in 2001. She has been working in patent law since 2002 and in 2013 took over as presiding judge of the 4c. Civil Chamber, which was newly established at that time

Margot Kokke holds an LLM as well as BSc (Chemistry) and MSc (biochemistry) degrees, all from Leiden University. Since 2014 she is a (patent) judge at the District Court The Hague.

András Kupecz holds an LLM in private law from Amsterdam University and an MSc from Utrecht University with focus on molecular biology. He was active as a European patent litigator, dually qualified as a lawyer and a European patent attorney, before taking up his duties at the UPC.

Camille Lignieres joined the Judiciary in 1994 after having graduated in Political Science and Private Law. In 2013, she joined the Paris Court of First Instance, in the Chamber specialising in Intellectual Property law, where she chaired as Presiding judge of a 3 judge-panel.

Rute Lopes obtained her law degree in 1994. She has been working as a judge since 1997. Most recently she has been serving as judge at the Appeal Court, in Lisbon - Intellectual Property and Competition division.

Mojca Mlakar is a Higher Court Judge at Administrative Court of the Republic of Slovenia. She is sitting at the Department of Property Relations, Environment and Spatial Planning, Second Tribunal; as such she is specialized in the field of Intellectual Property and Competition Law.

Information to be added soon. 

In 2000 Tobias Pichlmaier started as a judge at the District Court in Munich (Chamber for Patent Litigation). Currently, Mr Pichlmaier is Presiding Judge at the same court.

Petri Rinkinen has been focusing on intellectual property matters, first as an attorney, and then, as judge at the Market Court of Finland. 

Stefan Schilling has been a judge at Hanseatic Higher Regional Court of Hamburg, 5th Civil Panel (Copyrights, Trademarks, Unfair Competition) since 2021.

Walter Schober has been appointed judge in 2001 and is working since 2014 at the Higher Regional Appeal Court in Vienna.

Bérénice Thom entered the judicial service of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia in 2011. In 2021 she was appointed presiding judge to the Düsseldorf Regional Court and since then has chaired the 4a patent litigation chamber. 

Ronny Thomas has been a judge at the UPC Local Division Düsseldorf and Member of the Presidium since November 1st, 2022. Prior to his appointment, he served as Deputy Chairman of the 2. Civil Senat at the Higher Regional Court of Düsseldorf.

François Thomas completed his law studies in 1993 at the Bordeaux University. Between 1996 and 1998 he attended the National School of Magistrates, and became shortly after a civil judge at the Court of First Instance in Lille.

Prior to joining the Unified Patent Court, Peter Tochtermann was the Presiding Judge of the 7th Civil Chamber of the Regional Court Mannheim since September 2018, which regularly deals with large-scale patent infringement proceedings especially on SEPs in the telecommunication sector.

Ulrike Voß studied law in Trier. Since January 2014, she has been the presiding judge of the 15th Civil Senate responsible for patent litigation at the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court.

Alima Zana has worked since 1999 as a civil judge at the Tribunal of Milan, where she has been assigned to the Court of First Instance for the Enterprises. She is specialised in IP law and competition law and has acted as rapporteur in many cases related to both European and National Patents.

Tatyana Zhilova is the Presiding judge at the Administrative Court Sofia, where she holds the rank of a Judge at the Supreme Court of Cassation and the  Supreme Administrative Court.

Matthias Zigann is Presiding Judge of the UPC Local Division Munich and Presiding Judge at the Higher Regional Court Munich. There he is heading the 38th Civil (IP) Senate since November 2022.