Steven Richard Kitchen

Steven Richard Kitchen is a European patent attorney and European patent litigator who has more than 20 years of experience in patent protection of inventions within the mechanics, electronics, and software sectors, and draws on experience from both patent firms and the industry. He received an industrial PhD through a collaboration project between the company Kamstrup A/S, the Technical University of Denmark, and Risø National Laboratory. During his PhD project, he worked on optical metrology systems for, among other things, flow and pressure measurements. He also serves as a technical judge of the Maritime and Commercial High Court as well as the Eastern High Court in Denmark and is regularly called upon as a court-appointed in litigation cases. In 2024 he was appointed Technically Qualified Judge (TQJ) at the UPC in the technical areas of Electricity and Physics. In his work as a patent attorney he works with large international technology and manufacturing companies, as well as a number of local SMEs and universities. He handles all aspects of the patent life cycle and portfolio management, including patent strategy, patent clearances and freedom-to-operate analyses, and is often consulted in the early stages of R&D projects to align patent strategies and business plans. He has tremendously rich experience in opposition cases, including in oral proceedings before the European Patent Office, on behalf of both opponents and patentees. He coordinates and leads on dozens of ongoing opposition and appeal cases.