Noerr

In 1950, attorney Eduard Oehl opened a law firm in Munich, Germany.[3] In 1956, Rudolf Nörr (1929–2020) joined the firm as a partner, followed by Alfred Stiefenhofer (1931–2022) in 1959. Starting in 1983, the partnership operated under the names of the senior partners as “Nörr Stiefenhofer Lutz.” Ulrich Lutz had joined the firm in 1969. [7] When supra-regional law firms were permitted in Germany in 1989, the partnership opened an office in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the firm established an office in Dresden in the spring of 1990, making it the first West German law firm to open a location in East Germany.[8] That same year—again as the first law firm to do so—offices were opened in Budapest (Hungary) and Prague (Czech Republic). The strategic expansion into Eastern Europe continued with Warsaw (Poland) in 1992; a year later, the office at the Gendarmenmarkt in Berlin was opened. In 1994, an office was opened in Moscow (Russia), which was taken over in January 2022 by the local office head and other attorneys.[9]

Additional offices were opened in Bucharest (Romania) in 1998, Düsseldorf (Germany) in 1999, and Bratislava (Slovakia) in 2004. Noerr has been represented in New York (USA) since 2005, followed in 2007 by Kyiv, where the office became independent in 2013 under the name Nobles. [1] In 2010, the firm opened an office in London (UK), changed its legal form to a Limited Liability Partnership, and changed its name to “Noerr.”[2] Noerr has been present in Alicante (Spain), the headquarters of the European Union Intellectual Property Office, since 2011. Since 2014, Noerr has also been represented by its own office in Brussels (Belgium). In 2017, another office opened in Hamburg (Germany). As a result of Brexit, the firm changed its legal form to a partnership with limited professional liability (Noerr Partnerschaftsgesellschaft mbB) effective December 31, 2020. [3]

In 2024, Noerr withdrew from Eastern Europe. The offices in Bratislava, Bucharest, and Prague were taken over by the law firm Kinstellar, while the offices in Budapest and Warsaw were acquired by local partners through management buyouts.[4]