Joseph Straus

Professor Straus is a professor of law at the Universities of Munich and Ljubljana, and director of the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition and Tax Law in Munich. He is also an honorary professor and honorary director of the Intellectual Property Institute at Tongji University in Shanghai and honorary professor and honorary director of the Chinese-German Institute of Intellectual Property at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan.

Professor Straus has been associated with the Max Planck Institute since 1977, has taught European and German patent law at the University of Munich since 1990, and was a visiting faculty member at Cornell Law School between 1989 and 1998. He is author or co-author of numerous publications in the field of intellectual property law, especially in the field of the protection of biological invention. In 2000, he was the first non-scientist to win the Science Award of the Foundation for German Science. He has also been awarded two honorary doctorate degrees. Professor Straus teaches Chemical and Biotech Patent Law.