Michael is a German and European patent attorney and represents clients in the filed of intellectual property law in particular in the Life Science and Food sectors. He is a member of the IP group of Bird & Bird in Munich.

His technical focus is in the filed of organic and pharmaceutic chemistry as well as biotechnology and medicinal devices.

He has gained a broad experience in European and German patent and trademark practice such as representing clients in patent, trademark and utility model prosecution as well as in opposition and nullity proceedings. Michael also closely collaborates with the Bird & Bird attorneys-at-law in infringement proceedings. In addition, Michael has vast experience in advising clients e.g. in patent validity, infringement and German employee inventor’s law issues. He is admitted to represent clients before the German Patent and Trademark Office, the Federal Patent court, the Federal Supreme Court (in nullity proceedings), the European patent office and the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market.

He started his patent attorney training in 1997 in a patent law firm in Munich and was admitted as German and European patent and trademark attorney in 2001. Before joining Bird & Bird he worked as in-house patent attorney in a Biotech company specializing in vaccine development. Michael has been working with Bird & Bird in Munich since May 2006. He is a German and European Patent and Trademark attorney and advises and represents clients in IP matters, with a focus on IP issues in the field of life sciences, biochemistry, molecular biology, organic and pharmaceutical chemistry.

Michael studied biology with a focus on biochemistry, organic chemistry, virology and zoology at the Universities of Erlangen and Strasbourg from 1982 to 1988. He received his doctorate in 1992 on his studies on the use of Herpesvirus saimiri as cloning vector to express foreign genes, in particular oncogenes. From 1993 to 1996, he was a team leader at the Max-Planck-Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried. His main interest was the development of experimental therapies for treating Hepatitis C virus infections using chemically modified antisense oligonucleotides and ribozymes. These efforts were honoured with the silver medal of the Society for Progress in the Internal Medicine. Michael published 14 scientific articles in the field of virology and molecular biology.

Michael is a member of FICPI, EPI and the German Patent Attorney Chamber. He speaks German, English and French.