Murgitroyd, the global intellectual property firm based in Glasgow, is to expand its Munich operation with a move to larger premises.
The firm will move in November to offices on Hackerbrücke, close to the European Patent Office (EPO), positioning Murgitroyd at the heart of the European patent protection process.
The move coincides with a critical phase in the establishment of the European unitary patent, which aims to boost the value of patent protection by making it cheaper and faster to enforce an EU-wide patent.
Currently, several key items in the draft legislation are at a critical stage of negotiation.
Graham Murnane, a Munich-based director at Murgitroyd, said clients stood to gain enormously if and when the unitary patent became EU law. "Most importantly they will be able to take legal action in their own local unitary patent court to stop Europe-wide infringement of their European patent," he said.
"This is in contrast to the present system of separate national patent applications, or a single European patent application which must be converted to separate national patents after grant, with separate infringement proceedings necessary in each country in order to enforce the patent across Europe."
If the new central patent court overcomes European Parliament objections to "loss of individual rights", the main court will be in Paris with divisions in Munich and London.
Jamie LeLiever, head of global sales and marketing, added: "We have taken additional office space which will give our clients the opportunity to use our offices for briefings when attending patent hearings or appeals at the EPO."
Last month, the group, chaired by Ian Murgitroyd and co-led by chief executive Keith Young, said that activity levels and business performance were high in the second half of its financial year to May 31.
The shares were up 2% yesterday to a five-month high of 375p.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article