The JUVE Patent rankings are compilations of law and patent firms in Europe that, according to JUVE Patent research, have a leading reputation in their field. Our rankings are independently researched and written by an editorial team that provides daily coverage on the European patent market at www.juve-patent.com.
Currently we publish rankings for the patent markets in Austria, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and the UK. In 2024 we also published the first Europe-wide ranking on UPC litigation. You can find these rankings here.
Our main rankings list those firms that, according to JUVE Patent research, enjoy a particularly good reputation in patent litigation at national courts and the Unified Patent Court, as well as for important cases at the European Patent Office. These are grouped into tiers, with firms appearing alphabetically within each tier. Each firm featured in the main ranking tables is accompanied by a short analytical text evaluating the firm’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as its development over the past year. This includes recommended lawyers and examples of important client work. We also list leading individuals.
In addition, we list national and EPO patent filing work carried out by patent attorney firms and the specialisations for which they are recommended.
JUVE Patent rankings are primarily intended for clients but are also of great advantage to law and patent firms. Our aim is to aid commercial businesses by increasing transparency within a diverse and often confusing legal market.
You can find more rankings of commercial law firms active in other areas of the German legal market in our German-language publication JUVE Handbuch Wirtschaftskanzleien in print or online.
As part of our research, JUVE Patent’s editorial team sends out an annual questionnaire to law and patent firms. We also send out questionnaires and conduct interviews with clients, legal academics and judges. This is to ascertain their perception and assessment of the market as well as of law and patent firms.
Statements from clients are particularly important. The quotations by clients (and competitors) concerning individual lawyers, patent attorneys and their firms are carefully selected from numerous statements.
The law and patent firms that stand out in our research are ranked accordingly. However, JUVE Patent does not imply in any way that this list is exhaustive.
The editors at JUVE Patent take the utmost care in reporting the information provided but can nevertheless accept no responsibility for the quality of the recommendation or for the absence of a reference. The portrayal of the selected law and patent firms is not an advertisement and cannot be purchased in any way.
There is no such thing as ‘the best patent firm’. The claim that there exists such a thing as completely objective criteria for the comparison and evaluation of law and patent firms would be entirely mistaken. Unlike consumer goods, law and patent firms do not provide tangible objects on which their quality can be independently judged. They are service providers. Their activities can only be judged subjectively by clients and colleagues.
The JUVE Patent rankings have therefore one aim only. They attempt to reflect how clients and lawyers view the market. They describe certain law and patent firms as ‘leading’ and rate some ‘above’ others. Such statements represent subjective opinions. Therefore the JUVE Patent rankings are simply a way of expressing the subjective evaluations from numerous clients, lawyers and academics in Europe.
The editors at JUVE Patent aim to depict the cumulative impression in the legal market concerning the reputation of a patent firm as accurately as possible. The most important resource for this is the great depth and breadth of our research. However, translating such a huge number of evaluations into a table is also a subjective process. The reader should therefore also take into account the corresponding texts for each patent firm.
The criteria which play a role in such subjective assessments depend on what the client requires from the advisor and as these requirements change, so do the criteria. In over twenty years since the first patent rankings were published, the following have become increasingly important for both midsized law and patent firms as well as corporates:
Development: The way a patent firm has developed and the quality of its client base, i.e. which companies (sector, size, and significance) are advised by a firm on complex legal issues and to what extent.
Stable and successful international contacts: It is significant how a patent firm has reacted to increasing globalisation, whether the lawyers and patent attorneys regularly develop and nurture client relations to foreign companies, financial investors and partner firms.
Team work: Law and patent firms which form synergies to the benefit of their clients are usually more highly regarded than firms whose practice fields have no connection to one another.
Consistent quality: Some law and patent firms give the impression that they have a consistently high standard of quality in all areas of activity and consequently enjoy a good reputation among clients and colleagues.
The number of practitioners considered to be outstanding in a given practice field or specialisation.
Quality of service: There are noticeable differences in the speed, friendliness, reliability and organisation with which patent work is handled in the market.
Strategic forward planning: To what extent a firm instigates and influences trends in the legal market with regard to its future plans.
Firm culture: This relates to the (also external) stance, through which the practitioners of a firm are united and convey the firm’s philosophy and concept as a whole. This includes a balanced age structure as well as a promotion system and opportunities for lawyers or patent attorneys to establish themselves with clients. This is the only way a firm can acquire and retain the best practitioners.
For each firm in the ranking table, one or two offices are listed which focus on that particular field. However, that does not mean to imply that the field is not covered at other offices.
Each text evaluating a patent firm consists of a combination of the following sections:
The new JUVE Patent UPC litigation rankings follow the same principles as all other JUVE Patent rankings. The editorial team researches law and patent firms in Europe in which registered UPC representatives work. Their activities in cases filed at the UPC during the research period, as well as feedback from the market about their work in these cases, form the key basis for the evaluation and analysis of the most important UPC litigation firms.
Another important criterion is the firms’ strategic focus on the new UPC litigation business.
Lawyers and patent attorneys who receive many recommendations from the market and are UPC representatives are considered as recommended or leading individuals. The practices’ team size reflects the number of fee earners registered with the UPC.
The Unified Patent Court is still a young court (established in June 2023). A year and a half after its launch, a market for UPC litigation has quickly emerged among European law and patent firms. The conditions at the UPC and the scope of this litigation business will change considerably over the next five years. The JUVE Patent editorial team will take this into account and adjust the rankings and analyses accordingly.
Read more about the JUVE Patent Rankings and the JUVE Patent Award here.