Marc Nicolas joined the Controlling Office of European Patent Office (EPO) in 1991, as an administrator in a unit in charge of statistical information and strategic analyses. He is jointly responsible for forecasting patent application filings at the EPO, provides statistical information to EPO management as well as to external researchers and cooperates in several international patent statistic working groups.
After completing a Master in Mathematics at Angers University, France, he received a Diploma in Statistics from the Institut Supérieur de Statistiques (ISUP) in Paris. He then worked four years for Synthelabo, Paris, in the Biometrics Department, before he joined the European Patent Office.