Vossius & Brinkhof: Joint force for UPC litigation

There were ripples of excitement at the 2022 AIPPI conference in sunny San Francisco. In the hip Peruvian restaurant La Mar, a German and a Dutch law firm jointly hosted a reception to announce something special. Something that made waves in the European patent litigation market. The two firms announced to the assembled IP community the formation of Vossius & Brinkhof UPC Litigators.

According to the JUVE Patent rankings, Brinkhof was already one of the top litigation firms in the Netherlands at the time, while Vossius & Partner’s patent attorneys held a similarly prominent position in Germany. Their young litigation team was becoming increasingly well established in the market.

Through their alliance, the firms would handle all future UPC cases together, with the aim of being at the forefront of UPC litigation. Both firms wanted to translate their national positions to the UPC market and hold their own against large international competitors such as Bird & Bird or Taylor Wessing.

Exclusive cooperation

True to their strategy, Vossius and Brinkhof have retained their independence. In national proceedings or at the European Patent Office, they work seperately. Here they can, but do not have to, work together.

At the UPC, however, it is different. Here, the commitment was clear: Unless individual clients or conflicts prevented it, the lawyers of both firms would work together with the patent attorneys from Vossius on UPC cases. Typically, in preparing for the UPC, boutiques either chose to remain independent or, like the lawyers at Hoyng ROKH Monegier, they implemented a cross-border merger. Vossius & Brinkhof UPC Litigators was therefore the most unusual approach taken by IP boutiques.

Partners of Vossius & partner and Brinkhof jointly announced their new UPC litigation brand Vossius & Brinkhof UPC Litigators in September 2022 in San Francisco ©Vossius & Brinkhof UPC litigators

Many competitors initially dismissed the Vossius & Brinkhof UPC Litigators brand as a marketing gimmick. So far, however, the firms have worked together on all cases, with only one exception. For example, they jointly work for Oppo against Panasonic and for Roku and Optoma against Dolby over mobile communication standards. They also joined forces for Agfa against Gucci over a printing technology for handbags and for Amycel against Spyra regarding the patentability of fungi.

Only in the case against Sanofi-Aventis over cholesterol-lowering drug Praluent did Amgen instruct Koen Bijvank as a Brinkhof lawyer rather than under the brand, due to a conflict. The alliance comprises 28 lawyers, 49 patent attorneys and two dual qualified experts across five offices. The focus of the UPC work, however, is at the main offices in Amsterdam, Düsseldorf and Munich.

The triple merger that never happened

The announcement during the AIPPI came as a surprise to only a few, as the Dutch and German law firms had previously appeared together at UPC conferences. Many patent experts suspected that a German-Dutch liaison was in the offing. Initially, it was to be a three-way merger or cooperation, with Vossius and Brinkhof flirting with the top London law firm Bristows. None of these three top outfits ever officially confirmed this, but for several years they frequently appeared at conferences together and jointly organised UPC conferences — until Brexit in 2016.

Brexit put a spanner in the works practically overnight. British IP law firms such as Bristows were forced to reorganise and come up with their own strategy for future pan-European patent litigation. Most UK firms went their own way. When Boris Johnson’s government finally announced the UK’s withdrawal from the UPC project in 2020, the three potential partners buried their previous plans, and Vossius and Brinkhof continued on alone.