Welcoming Eva Schewior, new President of the DPMA

Eva Schewior worked in the Federal Ministry of Justice (BMJ) from 1994-2023 in several positions including delegation to the Permanent Mission to the European Union (EU) in Brussels. In 2004 she was appointed Head of Division for Administrative Matters of the DPMA, the Federal Patent Court and the European Patent Organisation. More recently she was Head of the Civil Law Division. Her duties included aspects of consumer protection as well as European contract law and international legal harmonisation in these areas, and the implementation of the Mortgage Credit Directive, Payment Accounts Directive and Payment Services Directive II into German law.

Eva Schewior succeeds Cornelia Rudloff-Schäffer, President of the DPMA from 2009 to 2023, and notably the first female in this role. Cornelia Rudloff-Schäffer set work-life balance as a strategic goal of the office and the DPMA is, according to Germany’s women’s magazine Brigitte, repeatedly one of the best employers for women. A renown expert in the field of IP protection and co-author of the standard legal commentary “Schulte, Patentgesetz mit EPÜ” among other titles, Cornelia Rudloff-Schäffer is to be thanked for more than three decades of academic, legislative and administrative work.

The DPMA is a higher federal authority operating within the portfolio of the Federal Ministry of Justice, and has almost 2,800 members of staff at offices in Munich, Jena and Berlin, examining inventions, granting patents, registering trade marks, utility models and designs, administering IP rights, and providing IP information to the public.