Patents

protecting your ideas

A patent protects from imitation and provides the owner with a competitive advantage. A patent gives the owner the right to the exclusive production, appliance and commercialization of the protected object for 20 years.

The essential advantage of a patent is that it is a certified property right: the invention has to be „new“, needs to be based on an „inventive step“ and needs to be “commercially applicable”. These requirements will be examined by the German Patent and Trademark Office in Munich.

Covered by the patent protection are technical objects, chemical products, methods for producing of goods, working methods and methods of application, microbiological methods and their application.

Patent Protection abroad

A German patent or utility model only protects against the unauthorized use of the protected invention in Germany. To protect the invention in other countries, it is possible to file national applications at the patent offices of the respective countries or at the European Patent Office for the contracting states of the European Patent Convention (EPC).

In addition, it is possible to obtain protection by an international patent application following the „Patent Cooperation Treaty“ (PCT) or other national patent schemes (Asia, Africa).