Nikolai is a German Patent Attorney, and a European Patent, Trademark and Design Attorney, specialising in patent-related matters in the fields of chemistry, life sciences, and nanotechnology.
Nikolai enjoys working with international clients, notably from Japan, as well as companies and inventors from jurisdictions of the civil law tradition.
He has deep experience in representing clients in oral proceedings before the European Patent Office (EPO). Nikolai has conducted about 200 oral hearings, and has achieved an overall success rate of over 80% in defending patents. This is significantly higher than the average of only about two thirds of EPO oppositions which are rejected or in which patents are maintained in amended form. He is also frequently asked to represent opponents in oral proceedings before the opposition divisions and appeal boards of the EPO.
Outside work, Nikolai enjoys riding his race bike and tinkering with electronics projects, as well as spending time with his family in Ibiza.
Nikolai specialises in prosecuting, defending and opposing inventions in the fields of:
- Pharmaceuticals
- Dentistry
- Nanotechnology
- Food technology
- Fine chemicals
- Industrial chemistry
- Agrochemicals
- Polymers
European Patent Attorney
German Patent Attorney
European Trade Mark Attorney
UPC Representative
Nikolai studied chemistry at FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany as well as the Université de Rennes I, and the University of Southern California, and graduated from FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg with a Dipl.-Chem. degree in chemistry. He then completed a PhD at the University of Southern California with Nobel laureate Prof. George A. Olah specialising in physical organic chemistry.
In addition to his legal training while becoming a Patent Attorney, he completed a Master of Laws program at the Kurt-Haertel-Institut für geistiges Eigentum at the Fernuniversität Hagen, specialising in European intellectual property rights.
Nikolai qualified as both a German Patentanwalt and European Patent Attorney in 1997. He joined the Law Office of Prof. Dr. Günter Wächtershäuser in 1998 as a founding partner of Wächtershäuser & Hartz.