Derk Visser

Derk has extensive experience in developing inventors’ ideas to get broad patent protection, having worked in patents since 1990. Derk is highly regarded as an authority on the European Patent Convention, having provided legal opinions on procedural and substantive issues relating to the EPC, both in pre-grant proceedings and in large patent validity cases.

He teaches European patent law all over Europe and gives seminars on the EPC in collaboration with the European Patent Office. He is the author of The Annotated European Patent Convention, the foremost commentary on European patent law, which he has updated annually since 1993 and was first published in 1994.

He joined EIP from a position as Senior Patent Attorney at Philips Electronics, prior to which he was a research scientist for 10 years. He wrote the ISO standard for the CD-ROM and the template for the DVD and Blu-ray standards. Derk studied applied and pure physics at Twente University, Oxford University and Groningen University.