Claudio Germinario

Biography

Claudio spends most of his time providing technical counsel in patent litigation in the pharmaceutical field. He represents big pharma originator and fine chemistry companies in infringement and nullity proceedings before Italian and foreign courts. In many cases, this involves working on several parallel national and transborder proceedings at once as well as maintaining strong coordination with foreign law firms. As a member of SIB’s Nano Bio Team, Claudio is involved in drafting, filing and prosecuting patent applications concerning new technologies in the nanotechnology platform. He also advises on patents for pharma, biotech and glass technology inventions. He performs freedom to operate and portfolio analyses in view of acquisitions and mergers of biotech and pharma companies. Claudio’s clients include primary multinational pharma and chemical companies, Italian and foreign public research institutions, Italian and foreign SMEs developing classic and high-tech medicaments in the fields of biotechnology and nanotechnology. Before joining SIB’s Rome office in 2001, Claudio spent over 20 years with the European Patent Office in Munich, first as a biotechnology examiner and later as a member of the board of appeal competent for pharmaceuticals. He acted as rapporteur or chairman in more than 100 decisions on key points of law such as interpretation of a medicament’s second therapeutic application, definition of and interaction between medical and non-medical treatments, limit of a reach-through claim, meaning of a functional claim, applicability of non-supported disclaimers, anticipating effect of speculative prior art, and many others. Claudio is enrolled with the Register of Court-Appointed Experts on Industrial Property of the Court of Rome, which is the Italian Court with the largest specialised IP section.  

Research Interest

Intellectual property rights and patent management