Europe’s Leading Patent Law Firms: methodology

Survey and sample

The list of Europe’s leading firms for services around patent prosecution and patent strategy consultation is based on recommendations made by clients and peers.

Survey participants could recommend such firms both in general and by specialities, categorised into six sectors.

About 7,500 specialist attorneys working in patent law firms and 2,500 experts working in the patent departments of companies were invited to take part in the survey.

The sample was collected via research conducted by Statista on relevant company websites, in publications and from the EPI (the Institute of Professional Representatives Before the European Patent Office), the professional body representing European patent attorneys.

The invitations were sent by email with a personalised link that could be used only once.

Certified European patent attorneys and clients who did not receive an individual survey invitation could participate via a link published on FT.com.

In such cases, their eligibility was checked before the recommendations were considered.

The survey was conducted between February 25 and April 5 2019. In total, 2,727 clients and peers participated, making several thousand recommendations.

Self-recommendations were prohibited and thus not considered.

Top lists

In total, 142 recommended firms offering the services of patent attorneys are in the overall list, sorted in alphabetical order.

Their websites and country of origin have been researched and recorded.

Firms that were especially recommended for their services in a sector have been included in the respective sector lists.

They were ranked in three classes: (1) gold (very frequently recommended), (2) silver (frequently recommended) and (3) bronze (recommended).

All lists were created through an extensive process of research. However, the quality of firms that are not included in these tables is not disputed.