Dear Reader,

Thank you for visiting our homepage. If you are looking for help in the fields of intellectual property in general - or about us in specific - you may find the following outline useful.

We serve domestic and foreign clients in all fields of intellectual property, and you will find many of the clients that we represent - as individual representatives where this is required, or as an association where this is possible - in the registers of the European, the International, and the Swiss Patent Office. We do, of course, all the regular work of drafting and prosecuting applications for patents, trademarks, designs, and other types of proprietary rights, as well as advising clients in matters of IP strategy, fair trade laws, litigation, and licensing.

Our main technological competence is in chemistry, physics, electronics, biotechnology, medical technology, and engineering.

Ritscher & Partner AG was formed as a successor to Ritscher & Seifert, founded in 1970 by Thomas Ritscher and Helmut E. Seifert †.

The signatures that you will find on the letters by Ritscher & Partner AG may pertain to the following persons:

Dr. Dipl. Chem. Thomas Ritscher. He has a doctorate in physical chemistry (osmotic pressure of polymer solutions) and broad experience in matters of intellectual property on various fields of technology. His studies included Industrial and Labour Relations under the Fulbright Program at Cornell University. A practicing patent attorney for more than thirty years, he is a European Patent Attorney and a member of the Association of Swiss Patent Attorneys (VSP), the International Federation of Patent Attorneys (FICPI), and the International Association for Protection of Intellectual Property (AIPPI). He served as a Judge at the Court of Commerce of the Canton of Zurich (State of the Swiss Federation) in about 200 Court cases including landmark cases such as Kodak v. Jumbo. He has chaired various seminars and round table conferences at the European Management Centre in Brussels and lectures about aspects of patent practice at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.

Dr. Dipl. Biochem. André Kasche. He studied chemistry and mathematics at the Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas, USA, as well as biochemistry, organic, and chemical engineering at the University of Hannover, Germany. His doctorate was awarded by the Max Planck Institute of Endocrinology on the synthesis of antihormones and study of their affinity in in-vitro and animal models. He has broad industrial practice including chemical research. He is both European Patent Attorney as well as German Patent Attorney with special emphasis on life sciences, the pharmaceutical industry, organic chemistry and in particular the area of biotechnology. His IP experience includes working for Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH, the office of Kutzenberger & Wolff, in Cologne, and Gruenecker & Partner in Munich. In 2004 he founded his own patent law firm in Munich and joined the practice of Ritscher & Partner AG in Zurich.

Nicola Burri. She is doing independent annuity control and registration maintenance and is also director of Servopatent GmbH, an IP service organisation.

Meinrad Helbling. He is in charge of our accounting operation.

And, last but not least, Dr. jur. Michael Ritscher who is a practicing attorney specializing in matters of intellectual property, and is Of Counsel to our operation.

We will be glad to answer any questions you might have about us, or concerning any specific IP problems of your business and look forward to serving your needs in the IP world.