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PATENTS

Commercially successful inventions are often copied or imitated. Patents allow you to protect your innovative, technical products or processes from unwanted imitation.

Our patent attorneys will support you in this. Starting with the evaluation of an invention, through the drafting of an application to the completion of the examination procedure before the European and German Patent Offices.

We challenge patents in opposition or revocation proceedings or defend them before all competent instances, including courts, the EPO and national patent offices.

After grant, we continue to look after your patents and represent you in the event of infringements of intellectual property rights and other matters such as licensing.

Scope of application

Technical products and methods, such as machines, devices, equipment, and chemical products, e.g. plastic granulate, artificial fertilisers or medicines; methods of manufacturing products, working and application methods; microbiological methods and their application.

Exclusions

Aesthetic creations (design), rules for games and computer programs (software as such), discoveries, business ideas cannot be patented.

Requirements

The invention must meet three requirements: It must be new, involve an inventive step and be industrially applicable.

Registration and examination

For the national area of application, the application is filed with the German Patent and Trade Mark Office in Munich. A technical description of the invention (usually with drawings) as well as the patent claims indicating what is to be protected must be submitted.

The expert wording of the patent application and in particular of the patent claims is of central importance, especially since no further technical specifications may be "added" after filing the application. Experience has shown that applications are often rejected due to errors which could have been avoided if the application had been carefully drafted. As a rule, the application documents should therefore be prepared by a patent attorney.

The patentability of the invention is only examined by the German Patent and Trade Mark Office upon request (subject to a fee). This request for examination does not have to be made immediately upon filing the application, but at the latest within seven years from filing the application, otherwise the application expires. The examination is carried out according to formal and substantive criteria; the latter include in particular the question whether and to what extent the subject matter of the patent application is protectable.

Maximum Term

The patent has a maximum term of protection of 20 years from the filing date. For maintenance, a fee is payable every third year from the date of filing. The renewal fees increase moderately as the term of the patent increases.