A warm welcome to our newest Patent Attorney, Gilbert Voortmans!

De Clercq & Partners is delighted to welcome Dr. Gilbert Voortmans – formerly head of 3M’s IP team in Europe and Chief Patent Counsel for Bayer Intellectual Property GmbH and Covestro AG – as the newest member of its patent team.

Gilbert obtained a PhD in Chemistry at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium as well as a Master's degree in Law from Nottingham Trent University, United Kingdom. He qualified as a European Patent Attorney in 1994 and as a Belgian Patent Attorney in 1999. He started his career in intellectual property at Agfa-Gevaert NV in 1990 and subsequently moved to 3M where he has lead 3M’s intellectual property team in Europe from 2006 till 2014.  In May of 2014 he joined Bayer Intellectual Property GmbH as Chief Patent Counsel for Bayer MaterialScience AG.  Following the IPO on October 6, 2015 of Bayer MaterialScience AG, which was renamed to Covestro, he became the Chief Intellectual Property Counsel of Covestro AG, a DAX listed company active in the field of high tech engineering plastics.

Gilbert brings a wealth of experience in various aspects of intellectual property. This includes in particular an expertise in drafting and prosecution of patent applications and extensive experience in opposition and appeal proceedings at the European Patent Office. He has actively taken part in patent litigation in Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands.  With his previous positions as an in-house counsel he also brings expertise in managing of intellectual property asset portfolios, drafting and negotiating intellectual property agreements.

Gilbert has also been a CEIPI tutor, lecturing at the courses organized by ie-net in Antwerp, Belgium and has lectured on a variety of IP topics at conferences such as Global Patent Congress, LES and WHU - Otto Beisheim School of Management.  He is a co-author of “Made Available to the Public” – Understanding the Differences of the America Invents Act from the European Patent Convention in Its Definition of Prior Art, published in Cybaris®, an Intellectual Property Law Review published by the Intellectual Property Institute at William Mitchell College of Law, St. Paul, MN, USA.

De Clercq & Partners is very excited to have Gilbert join the firm as he will undoubtedly strengthen the patent team as an excellent European Patent Attorney.

This further expansion of the team will allow us to maintain the quality and timing of the service that we aim to provide to our clients.

We are looking forward to a fruitful collaboration!