Ingo Kober was the third president of the European Patent Office

European Patent Office

The European Patent Office is one of the two organs of the European Patent Organisation , the other being the Administrative Council. The EPO acts as executive body for the Organisation while the Administrative Council acts as its supervisory body as well as, to a limited extent, its legislative...

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After completing his legal studies, Ingo Kober began his professional career in 1972 as judge and public prosecutor in Mannheim

Mannheim

Mannheim is a city in southwestern Germany. With about 315,000 inhabitants, Mannheim is the second-largest city in the Bundesland of Baden-Württemberg, following the capital city of Stuttgart....

 and Tauberbischofsheim

Tauberbischofsheim

Tauberbischofsheim is a German town in the north-east of Baden-Württemberg on the river Tauber with a population of about 13,000. It is the capital of the Main-Tauber district....

. In 1975 he moved to the Federal German Ministry of Justice (MoJ), where he served until 1982. He then worked for a short time as chief legal policy adviser before returning to the MoJ in November 1982 as head of its "Cabinet and Parliamentary Affairs" department. Subsequently he took charge of personnel and organisation (1985), then of overall administration at the MoJ (1986).

In January 1991, Ingo Kober was appointed Secretary of State

Secretary of State

Secretary of State or State Secretary is a commonly used title for a senior or mid-level post in governments around the world. The role varies between countries, and in some cases there are multiple Secretaries of State in the Government....

 (German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

: Staatssekretär) at the MoJ, a position he held until taking over as third president of the European Patent Office

European Patent Office

The European Patent Office is one of the two organs of the European Patent Organisation , the other being the Administrative Council. The EPO acts as executive body for the Organisation while the Administrative Council acts as its supervisory body as well as, to a limited extent, its legislative...

. He held this post from January 1, 1996 to June 30, 2004. In 2007, he was President of the Administrative Council of the Centre for International Industrial Property Studies

Centre for International Industrial Property Studies

The Centre for International Intellectual Property Studies, or Centre d'Etudes Internationales de la Propriété Intellectuelle in French , is a Strasbourg, France-based training centre for specialists in intellectual...

 (CEIPI), which is part of the Robert Schuman University

Robert Schuman University

The Université Robert Schuman, also known as Strasbourg III or URS, was a university in Strasbourg, Alsace, France. In 2007, there were nearly 10,000 students enrolled at the university, including more than 1,500 foreign students. The university tended to teach and research in fields such as law,...

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Further reading

Ingo Kober, Präsident des Europäischen Patentamts, im Gespräch mit Klaus-Joachim Jenssen, Bayerischer Rundfunk

Bayerischer Rundfunk

Bayerischer Rundfunk [Bavarian Broadcasting] is the public broadcasting authority for the German Freistaat of Bavaria, with its main offices located in Munich. BR is a member of ARD.- Legal foundation :...

, Sendung vom 06.03.1998 (pdf)

External links

• Curriculum vitae of Ingo Kober (archived version of the EPO web site) Ingo Kober on Munzinger-Archiv