Martin Kohrs

Martin is a European Patent Attorney and Representative before the European Patent Office (EPO). He joined the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) Patents Department of Novagraaf in 2020 and has been Head of the ICT Department since 2025.

Martin has more than 33 years’ experience in intellectual property, covering all stages of the patent lifecycle, from acquisition through to exploitation and enforcement against third parties. A consistent focus throughout his career has been the valorisation of patent portfolios, including both implementation patents and standard-essential patents (SEPs), notably in the context of patent pools.

He is also recognised for his strong understanding of the industrial environment and business needs. Having been responsible for protecting innovation for large R&D laboratories comprising several hundred researchers, Martin has extensive experience in R&D awareness programmes, cross-stakeholder collaboration, and the design, implementation and monitoring of tailored IP strategies.

Career history

Martin is a qualified engineer, holding degrees from INSA Lyon and from the CEIPI (University of Strasbourg), where he specialised in patents, trademarks, designs and patent litigation in Europe.

He began his career with a company renowned for its expertise in patent portfolio exploitation, working in fields such as image processing, communication networks and user interfaces. He rapidly took on management responsibilities, leading teams of patent engineers in these technical areas. In addition to patent acquisition and exploitation, he was involved in establishing portfolio management processes and harmonising them at an international level.

In 2003, Martin became responsible for the patent aspects of a value-creation programme for a consumer electronics product, further strengthening his expertise in infringement analysis and claim charting. In 2006, based in Beijing, he led the Asia Patent and Licensing team and, from 2009 onwards, also coordinated patent activities related to standardisation.

Work highlights

Having lived in five countries on three continents, Martin is used to working in a multicultural and international environment.

He has a deep understanding of industry stakeholders and their needs and, having been in charge of patent matters for larger R&D laboratories in several countries, of the development and deployment of adapted patent management strategies.

He has been involved in patent matters in areas such as electronics, information and communication technologies and software, signal processing, image and video processing and coding/compression, conditional access, user interfaces and augmented/mixed/virtual reality.

Memberships

Martin is currently a member of the CNCPI.

Languages

• English
• French
• German

Areas of expertise

• R&D community patent awareness training and ‘invention mining’
• Drafting and prosecution of patent applications in France, Europe and other countries.
• Patentability, validity, infringement and freedom-to-operate reports
• Claim charting
• Management of inventions and patents related to standards (SEPs), essentiality evaluations, declarations to Standard Setting Organisations (SSOs)
• Licensing and monetisation
• Patent strategy
• Portfolio management
• Employee inventions and remuneration
• Auditing, evaluation and monetisation of patent portfolios
• Disputes
• Agreements