Hans-Rainer Jaenichen is a German patent attorney, a registered European patent attorney and a European trademark and design attorney. He has been a partner at VOSSIUS since 1990. He studied biology and holds a PhD in molecular immunology.
Dr Jaenichen’s activities are primarily in the biotech and pharmaceutical area. He represents clients at the EPO, the German Patent and Trademark Courts and before German courts. He specialises in prosecution, oppositions, revocation proceedings, infringement proceedings and has done compulsory licence proceedings.
He has published articles about human immunoglobulin genes as well as articles in various journals concerning the patenting of biopharmaceutical and plant inventions. He has also been an editor for the journal The Biotechnology Law Report. His book From Clones to Claims was published in 2016 together with an international team of authors.
Dr Jaenichen is a supporting member of the Max Planck Society and a member of the Board of Trustees at the Munich Intellectual Property Law Center.
His cases cover the entire field of biotechnology and biology, including microbiology and molecular biology, genetics, diagnostics, clinical sciences, plant genetics and pharmaceuticals. The α-IFN and erythropoietin cases (T 301/87, T 412/93) were the most significant of their time. Other cases have related to the production of recombinant proteins, including their tailored glycosylation, and to improved media for cell cultures. A series of cases dealt with nucleic acid amplification processes, particularly with polymerase chain reaction (PCR), which has become indispensable for cloning and diagnostics (eg, T 78/96, T 216/96). He has also worked on cases that dealt with the required DNA polymerases, particularly the Taq polymerase (eg, T 1080/01). Other cases involved RNAi, aptamers, ribozymes and antisense RNA. Further ones dealt with transgenic plants (including G 1/98) and animals, with vaccines against viral and bacterial infections (particularly conjugated pneumococcal vaccines, such as Prevnar 13®), recombinant viruses, syntheses of non-ribosomal antibiotics, biological implants, gene therapy and enzyme replacement therapy with acid-α-glucosidase recombinantly produced in CHO cells. Other cases involved companion diagnostics and diagnostic targets including several appeal cases on patents for the genes BRCA1 and BRCA2, ie, the diagnostic targets for breast cancer predisposition that changed the US patent landscape (eg, T 80/05, T 666/05 and T 1213/05). A recent large series of opposition cases relate to CRISPR technology. One of these cases (T 844/18) has confirmed fundamental principles of how to deal with legal aspects of claiming priorities, eg, the ‘all applicants’ or ‘same applicants’ approach.
