Services of the Centre for Patents and Standards

Before submitting a patent application or commencing research and development work, you should investigate the current state of the art in your field. This way, you can avoid duplicating someone else’s invention, distinguish your work from known solutions and generate ideas for new projects.

We can conduct research on your behalf in licensed databases and provide a detailed research report with publications identified as relevant, along with links for you to access the full texts.

By regularly reviewing the current status of a property right in the register, you can quickly ascertain whether a right has been issued or registered, enabling you to file a timely opposition (nine months for a patent) or objection (three months for a German trademark).

Before launching your new product design on the market, you should check for potential conflicts with existing property rights. Would you like to protect your product against imitations? Are you considering filing an application for property rights? The German Patent and Trade Mark Office (DPMA) will not review the novelty or uniqueness of your design prior to registration.

However, we can conduct research on your behalf in licensed databases and provide a detailed research report with registered designs identified as relevant.

Before you use a new name or logo for a product, a service or your company, you should check whether it is already subject to trademark protection. In addition to identical matches, we strongly recommend searching for similar trademarks to eliminate potential confusion.

We can conduct research on your behalf in licensed databases and provide a detailed research report with trademarks identified as relevant.

Would you like to conduct research yourself? We can advise you regarding research resources available free-of-charge online and work with you to develop a strategy to get your research started. This includes research into patents, utility models, trademarks and designs. We can also assist with your research in the reading room at the Centre for Patents and Standards. In addition, our Reading Room offers access to licensed databases to support your research.

While we offer advice and information on industrial property rights, we are unable to provide legal advice. With this in mind, we work with the regional law firms specialising in patent law to offer free one-on-one appointments with patent attorneys, lasting roughly 30 minutes, on the first Tuesday of each month. This service is intended to assist you in obtaining property rights. These appointments do not offer sufficient time for time-intensive activities, such as drafting application documents.

Appointments by prior arrangement only.

Patent monitoring enables you to keep up to date with patent applications in your field along with the patent activities of your competitors. Together with you, we create a search profile with the relevant patent classifications in your technical field, appropriate keywords and/or specific applicants and inventors. You usually receive details of the documents identified as relevant on a monthly basis.

Statistical evaluation of patent literature can help to inform your decisions when determining your own research and development foci. Conducting statistical analyses of patents promptly provides information regarding technology trends, potential applications and cooperation partners for your innovative technologies. 

Do you have a registered trademark? Would you like to prevent others from imitating it? We conduct research on a monthly basis to examine newly filed and registered trademarks identical or similar to your own in goods and service categories relevant to you. This way, you can object to new applications and registrations before the deadline.

We offer confidential meetings lasting one to two hours to discuss which forms of property rights would be suitable for your idea and outline the requirements you should bear in mind. In these meetings, we provide an overview of the costs involved and highlight national and international routes of applying for property rights. We also advise on research methods. If you wish to discuss legal issues, please arrange a free initial consultation for inventors.

We regularly host information events on industrial property rights as well as research seminars on researching patents and trademarks. We would be happy to offer training in line with your needs and, if you wish, at your institution or company premises.