Philip Kerpen

Philip Kerpen is a partner at Rentsch Partner AG and a European and Swiss patent attorney. He handles patents in electrical engineering, computer science and physics, with a focus on software, measurement and control technology, cryptography, machine learning and distributed systems. He is also qualified to represent clients before the Unified Patent Court.

Kerpen studied physics at ETH Zurich, specialising in solid-state physics, and wrote his master's thesis in 2012 on the characterisation of organic semiconductors. He then did research at ZHAW on simulation tools and at Empa on electrolysis and hydrogen storage. In 2015 he moved into industry as a systems engineer at a product development company in Zurich, and in October 2017 he joined Rentsch Partner. He has been a professional representative before the European Patent Office since 2021.

He writes regularly about software patents, for example on EPO case law for computer-implemented inventions and on how open-source software and patents fit together. Legal 500 2026 singles him out in his field.