Mewburn Ellis is one of the UK's largest firms of Chartered Patent Attorneys, European Patent Attorneys, Registered Trade Mark Attorneys and European Trade Mark Attorneys, covering a full range of intellectual property, including patents, trade marks, designs, industrial copyright and related matters.

Amongst European patent attorney firms, we consider ourselves to be uniquely placed to assist our clients in maximising their patent protection in the field of nanotechnology and to provide advice in relation to the rights of others in this field. Our new nanotechnology industry team provides the firm with a knowledge and experience base for nanotech patenting.

Nanotechnology has been attracting and continues to attract a lot of attention from scientists, businesses, inventors and politicians across the wide range of sectors it impacts on, including, for example: medical; energy management; electronics and optical fields.

Patents are being granted for nano-materials and devices, for the underlying nano-structures that form the building blocks for these materials and devices, for products incorporating these structures, materials and devices, and for developments in the processes for fabrication, measurement and testing at the nano-scale.

Our nanotech industry team reflects the cross-disciplinary nature of nanotech inventions. For complex cases, we can bring together a case team of two or more people with the necessary mix of technical backgrounds. This is possible due to the very wide range of technical backgrounds covered by the firm.

A few nanotech inventions are truly pioneering, opening up new areas of research in different technical fields. However many nanotechnology inventions are the application of nano techniques to existing technologies, exploiting the unusual properties that manifest themselves at the nanoscale.

It is to be expected that the EPO, like other patent offices, will have difficulties in carrying out reliable prior art searches for early nanotech inventions. But haven't we been here before? The early days of biotech patenting threw up similar problems for patent offices. The EPO developed complex case law for such situations, providing the basis for inventive step and sufficiency objections against broad claims in any technical field.

We are able to draw on our wealth of experience of biotech patenting at the EPO, and apply the lessons learned to the nanotech field in order to ensure that our clients' nanotech inventions are given the broadest and strongest possible protection.

We also have a detailed understanding of the EPO's opposition and appeal procedures, both offensive and defensive, in all aspects of technology. Experience from early biotech patents shows us that oppositions can be expected to commercially valuable nanotech patents. Our nanotech industry team, whether attacking or defending nanotech patents, will use this experience to protect our clients' interests to the fullest extent possible.

The nanotech industry team is led by Matthew Naylor, Stephen Carter, Robert Watson and Simon Kiddle. Any one of these will be pleased to provide further information.