Patents & Trade Secrets including Licensing and Competition Law and their respective business environments (IP strategy and IP management).
Having graduated from law schools in Germany as well as in the U.S. and having gained quite a bit of experience in legal practice, Prof. Ann (*1962) holds the TUM School of Management’s Chair of IP Law, the German speaking world’s oldest and largest chair for patents and trade secrets. Prof. Ann teaches IP Law at both, TUM and the Munich Intellectual Property Law Center (MIPLC). During his time as Associate Professor of IP Law at Freiburg University, Faculty of Law, Prof. Ann from 2001-03 served part time as a judge on the Mannheim Regional Court’s renowned IP infringement panel, and in 2018 was suggested to Germany’s federal judges’ selection committee as a candidate for a judgeship at the German Federal Court of Justice. He declined the honor and had his name taken off the list in order to stay in academia. Prof. Ann often teaches abroad and has done so at eminent universities on all continents. Prof. Ann’s publications include seven books, among them the German speaking world’s leading treatise on patent law (8th ed, 2022), and more than 160 articles and contributions to books. Prof. Ann is a listed Neutral with the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center, chairman of the Nuremberg Chamber of Commerce’s Standing Court of Commercial Arbitration, and has served as an arbitrator in almost two dozens of arbitral proceedings. In 2021, he was privileged to hold a Research Fellowship at the renowned Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS).
Independence and impartiality of bodies charged with review of decisions at USPTO, SIPO, JPO, KIPO, EPO.
Sponsored student research project on backlogs at Big 5 Patent Offices.
Research on how African patent systems could be set up in ways beneficial for African SMEs, including present reform of the South African Company and IP Commission (CIPC)
