Meissner Bolte is a Pan-European Intellectual Property law firm headquartered in Germany. We are an award-winning firm, being highly ranked by IP Stars, The Financial Times, and The Legal 500. We provide a complete range of IP services from drafting and filing applications, prosecuting these applications to grant, and enforcement of these rights post-grant.

Meissner Bolte UK is based in Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire, between the cities of Manchester and Leeds. Hebden Bridge is set in the rolling hills of Yorkshire near various manufacturing hubs. This is an idyllic setting and puts us in the middle of a vibrant area for technological development.

The majority of our clients are medium-sized UK businesses. This means that we have close and direct contact with the majority of our clients. We also are involved in contentious work, as well as working with our German offices to service our international clients. This contributes to an extremely varied workflow.

Training

Our attorneys are very familiar with the UK and European qualification process, and so offer invaluable insight towards becoming a UK and European qualified patent attorney. This is a challenging process and typically takes 4-7 years depending on the speed at which a trainee wants to approach the exams.

Our approach to training will differ for every individual. Our standard route involves a part-time university course around a year after joining us. Once a candidate approaches the UK final examinations we then institute a one-on-one tutorial process.

Who are we Looking For?

We are looking for someone with a background in the physical sciences or engineering who wants to continue to utilise their technological background in a field outside academia. We are keen to hear from applicants who are bright, enthusiastic and good communicators. The successful applicant will find themselves challenged every day working at the boundary between technology and the law. We have a mixed workload – and we pass this on to our trainees. A trainee at our firm will be exposed to a great variety of work very early in their career. We believe this is the best way to build an appreciation of the role of a patent attorney. At larger UK firms we know trainees often work almost solely on examination report responses – and this is very much the opposite of our more holistic approach.

We are also keen for our trainees to meet their German counterparts, in particular those based in Munich. Our German firm runs an IP conference “The IP Days” around Oktoberfest every year and we aim for trainees to attend either this or other events in Germany during their training.

As we are based on the Yorkshire/Lancashire border we have clients in Greater Manchester, Leeds, Yorkshire, Lancashire, Derbyshire, Northumberland, North Wales, Merseyside and Cumbria. If an applicant has a personal connection to any of these areas that would be a benefit  but is by no means a requirement.

We welcome speculative applications.