Kuhnen & Wacker (K&W) is a full-service IP law firm which was established more than 40 years ago in Freising, close to Munich airport. The firm represents small and medium-sized enterprises as well as major corporate and global technical innovators. K&W has a fine blend of senior attorneys who have gained sophisticated experience over time and younger proactive attorneys who may, in case of need, rely on the experience of their more senior colleagues and join various interdisciplinary teams.
The K&W philosophy
Continuity, quality and strategy have been the three pillars and principles of this nationally and internationally regarded IP firm since 1976. Based on these principles, K&W offers high-quality proactive services at competitive rates.
Team
K&W consists of a diverse team of about 90, 19 of whom are specialised attorneys and attorneys at law. These attorneys are supported by expert patent engineers and specialists, as well as by a highly qualified and multilingual administrative team. The firm’s experienced and professional staff – as well as its state-of-the-art IT department – guarantee prompt responses to the needs of clients. K&W is also known to handle complex cases successfully.
Added value
K&W has earned a worldwide reputation through its handling of sophisticated litigation matters. Our long record of success includes the Epilady litigation as well as more recent litigation relating to cardiac stents, ink cartridges for printers and in the automotive field.
K&W adds value for its clients in many areas, such as licensing, portfolio analysis and management, arbitration and mediation, antitrust, due diligence, competitive benchmarking and intermediary platforms. Some components of this added value arise from our internal teamwork, external networking, internal technical and IT staff, and frequent seminar presentations in Japan, the United States, China and Europe.
Certification
In order to document the high-quality standards that the firm has upheld for years, K&W obtained the official ISO 9001 certification.
Trademark expertise
K&W is specialised in IP-related litigation and prosecution and offers all kinds of services in connection thereto (eg, filing trademarks and oppositions, applying and enforcing preliminary injunctions, handling court procedures and border seizures).
The firm is an active member of many trademark organisations, such as the International Trademark Association, the European Communities Trademark Association and the German Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property. The trademark attorneys at K&W are intensely involved and active in several committees in order to develop, improve and harmonise trademark law worldwide.
K&W is steadily growing and the trademark department moved to a new additional building at the end of 2011. The firm handles more than 4,500 trademark files and has filed more than 1,000 trademarks worldwide since 2011. The new building also offers fully equipped conference and seminar rooms in order to provide clients with top-quality service and top-quality facilities. The annual IP seminar that K&W hosts always includes one day of current trademark and design topics.
The technical background of K&W’s patent attorneys – most of whom are also well versed in the trademark fields – makes them valuable experts when it comes to assessing identity and similarity of goods and services in opposition cases.
Legal fields
K&W is a specialised law firm which has been offering comprehensive legal counsel through its competent team of patent attorneys and attorneys at law for more than four decades. In order to provide the best support for its clients in the context of global competition, K&W has a comprehensive network of colleagues and associates in more than 150 countries, with which it has longstanding relationships.
K&W’s services include the following:
- Trademarks
- Designs
- Patents
- Utility models
- Semiconductor topology
- Plant variety protection
- Variety denomination
- Employee inventions
- University inventions
- National infringement proceedings
- International infringement proceedings
- Licence agreements
- International patent cooperation (Patent Cooperation Treaty, European Patent Convention)
- International trademark cooperation (Madrid Agreement, EU trademarks)
- International design cooperation (Hague Agreement, EU designs)
- Japanese patent law and Japanese industrial property rights
- Copyright
- Competition law
- Domain law
- Counterfeiting
- Software, computer-implemented inventions
- Topography protection
- IP evaluation and assessment
- Defence and enforcement of IP rights
- Portfolio analysis
- Due diligence
- Benchmarking
- Consultation services regarding the development of IP strategies
“KUHNEN & WACKER IP Made in Germany”