Services To keep you well informed at all times
Our customer service is a competent and reliable partner at your side. Its primary goal is to “help you to help yourself”.
Such assistance is important when preparing the application procedure for all types of IP rights and makes an essential contribution to ensuring the quality of applications. In addition, the DPMA offers services for conducting IP searches and monitoring competitors. We make our IP data available to information providers and grant direct automated access to our services (DPMAconnectPlus). Despite all the restrictions to face-to-face contact with visitors, caused by the coronavirus pandemic, we are there for you.
You can make use of the following services:
You can contact the staff of our Central Customer Care and Services by telephone at +49 89 2195 1000, by e-mail at info@dpma.de and by post. You will not only receive information of a general nature but also advice on the correct way to file an IP application and answers to questions on filed applications.
We hope that we will soon be able to again provide face-to-face consultations to you at our enquiry units.
Online applications 2021
Design applications
National patent applications
National trade mark applications
National utility model applications
Customer enquiries by IP type in 2021
We provided information and assistance over 140,000 times in 2024:
Customer contacts by communication channel in 2021
Searches are possible online any time via our DPMAregister and DEPATISnet databases. You can also inspect case files online using our DPMAregister service. For search support, you can use the contactless services by telephone, e-mail or via the online search.
Our search rooms in Munich and Berlin will be reopened to the public from 1 June 2022. We look forward to meeting you face to face again. Please be sure to make an appointment in advance by contacting our Central Customer Care and Services.
Free initial consultations for inventors are offered in cooperation with the Chamber of Patent Attorneys, by patent attorneys at various institutions in many towns across Germany. In Munich and Berlin, these consultations will take place again in the rooms of the DPMA from 1 July 2022. The Central Customer Care and Services will be happy to arrange an appointment for you. Consultations are not possible without prior appointment.
For a general introduction to industrial property protection or, specifically, to searches in our databases, we offer various workshops and seminars.
In 2021, due to the coronavirus pandemic, it was again not possible to hold face-to-face workshops and seminars. We have made every effort to offer these events digitally at the proven high-quality level. This enabled us to hold numerous events for many target groups with special consideration to the characteristics and needs of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The response was very good, as interested parties from all over Germany were able to attend these seminars and workshops without having to invest a great deal of time and effort. The workshops and seminars offered by the DPMA are also increasingly noticed and used in German-speaking foreign countries.
For our workshops and seminars, please refer to our website (in German).
Formerly, our annual report was available in a print version and electronically in PDF format. From now on, an additional version in HTML format is available to you on our website.
But we offer you even more on our website: concise information leaflets and extensive brochures containing information on patents, utility models, trade marks and designs, on searches and on our electronic services. Our focus topics “Milestones” and “Background” and our newsletters provide you with interesting news and everyday information about IP rights. Since 2021, the newsletter “DPMAmitteilungen” has provided you with official information such as announcements, notices and notices of the President.
Via our website, you also have free access to the most recent issue of the publication “Blatt für Patent-, Muster- und Zeichenwesen”, published once a month by Carl Heymanns Verlag. This gazette covers acts, ordinances and official notifications on IP protection, including selected court decisions and notifications about patent agents and representatives. Our publication “Erfinderaktivitäten” highlights interesting innovations from research and technology in a detailed scientific way and our series “DPMAinformativ” addresses specific topics concerning patent information. You can also order a number of our publications in print from us.
In our two databases, DPMAregister and DEPATISnet, which are publicly accessible on our website, you can carry out free searches on patents, utility models, trade marks and designs: You can use DPMAregister to consult the register of legal and procedural status information; DEPATISnet gives you an overview of the global state of the art. Thanks to three different search modes, you can use both, a quick entry-level search and extensive search queries. You can use our DPMAkurier alert service to monitor IP rights. You will receive the results in automated e-mails. The DPMAconnectPlus service offers you automated online access to all official register and publication data from DPMAregister and the opportunity to download patent and utility model documents from the DEPATIS document archive.
Our information and support services are supplemented by a network of 19 local patent information centres (PIZ) across Germany. The individual patent information centres offer a large variety of services in the area of industrial property protection, especially for SMEs, members of universities and research institutions as well as independent inventors. However, neither the patent information centres nor the DPMA can give legal advice. Legal advice is exclusively provided by patent attorneys and lawyers. For more information about our cooperation with the patent information centres, please refer to our chapter “National cooperation partners”. You can reach the patent information centres online at www.piznet.de (in German).
In 2021, we participated in trade fairs only digitally, due to the pandemic. However, in that format too, we presented the DPMA as a modern service provider and a federal centre of expertise on intellectual property at various trade fairs and events. On these occasions, our virtual trade fair stand was used for the first time. The focus of the trade fair stand is to raise public awareness of industrial property rights and provide IP information to the public. Visitors can take an interactive 360° tour of the DPMA and learn about IP rights and search options at the “info points” integrated into the tour. We also place a special focus on information for small and medium-sized enterprises and start-ups.
Would you like to learn more about the DPMA? Please find our virtual trade fair stand here. The trade fair agenda for 2022 is available at www.dpma.de/dpma/veranstaltungen/messen/index.html.
We accept general written complaints — however, no complaints in the legal sense — at a central unit, analyse the requests and respond in close cooperation with the division involved. The analysis repeatedly reveals potential for improvement, which is then discussed and implemented. Please write to us and explain your request if you have not been entirely satisfied with the services of the DPMA. You can contact us by e-mail at info@dpma.de or by post.
Overview News from the IT services
In 2021, too, we worked continuously on improving and expanding the electronic case file processing systems.
The design area is working intensively on fully completing the DPMAdesigns system for electronic case file processing.
We have made continuous progress in the conceptual preparation and the technical implementation of the requirements of the design area so that we were able to implement the first essential technical changes in 2021. In March 2021, the design area was the last IP area to be connected to the DPMA digitisation centre. In April 2021, we included a major part of the system, referred to as “electronic file inspection”, into the productive test operation.
In the further development, we are now implementing the elementary processes for the design procedure, such as “new design application”, “document preparation” or “document distribution”. Other important steps are the connection to the required horizontal services, such as DPMAzahlungsverkehr (DPMA payment transactions), and the integration of DPMArecherche (DPMA search).
We aim to complete the entire system and hand it over to the design area in 2024.
In November 2021, we newly implemented e-filing of design applications.
Instead of ten designs, you can now combine up to 20 designs in an application (this is called multiple application). In addition, you can now export and import your data. A new modern layout and improved user guidance make the application process even more user-friendly.
More than eight years ago, on 12 November 2013, DPMAdirektWeb went live and since then has enabled signature-free applications for trade marks and designs. After the start of the electronic receipt of documents a decade earlier, the foundation for the use of a modern web application was laid in 2012 by abolishing the requirement that applications for trade marks and designs must be filed in writing. Even then, the focus was on user-friendliness and accessibility. The aim was to offer all users the option to apply for trade marks and designs in an uncomplicated way and without an electronic signature by providing a low-threshold service. Since the launch of DPMAdirektWeb, more than 300,000 trade mark applications and more than 32,000 design applications have been filed using this service. In total, the DPMA receives 78% of all trade mark applications and more than 91% of all design applications in a digital format in 2021.
The technological convergence of DPMAdirektWeb and DPMAdirektPro creates additional synergy effects that accelerate further development and form the basis for optimising the digital input channels. The latest example of this is the addition of the editor for group titles to the list of goods and services.
Due to the pandemic, our offices were temporarily closed to the public. In order to make the broadest possible search services available to customers, the DPMA introduced online-assisted searches on the Internet. The focus is on technical explanations of our search tools and individual assistance in using them. This service for interactive personal assistance in online searches is provided by the Berlin office.
You can meet DPMA search experts virtually on the Internet who will provide individual search support to you and explain how to best use our tools and services. For example, our experts will show you how to optimise your personal IP search in our databases. However, we do not provide legal advice.
To make an online search appointment, please contact the search room of the DPMA in Berlin. You will receive your access data and further information by e-mail.
During the online search, you can mutually share computer screens with our search experts. This way we can demonstrate to you how to use our search tools and you can show us where you have difficulties using our web services. For more information and the contact details of our search room, please visit our website.
Overview Electronic services
The following e-services are available to our customers:
- Online search in the bibliographic data as well as in the legal and procedural status data
- You can produce an uncertified excerpt from the register yourself
- You can inspect the various parts of a patent case file online
- You can choose between three different search modes: basic, advanced or expert
- NEW: You can re-run a search simply by using a previously generated search link
- NEW: The help pages of DPMAregister have been revamped completely. The help text is now combined in one PDF document, enabling a search in the entire help pages
- NEW: You can save up to 100 old search queries in the expert mode
- Document archive with clearly more than 100 million data records from about 100 countries; you will receive almost 60% of these data records directly as PDF
- You can conduct online searches for prior art published in patent literature from all over the world
- NEW: Advanced search mode with customisable search form
- NEW: You can save up to 100 old search queries in the expert and IKOFAX modes
DPMAdirektPro
- Legally valid online filing of applications for all IP rights
- You need a special software, which we provide to you free of charge, as well as a qualified signature card
- You can register for the electronic document mailing service
DPMAdirektWeb
- Legally valid online filing of applications for trade marks and designs as well as international registration of marks
- Contrary to DPMAdirektPro, no signature card or special software is required
- Legal status monitoring of certain IP rights
- You can subscribe to receive IP gazettes/journals by e-mail
- You can submit combinations of applicant/inventor/owner as well as of classification symbols
- Establishment of an interface, which provides automated access to all official register and publication data from DPMAregister
- You can download patent and utility model documents from the DEPATIS document archive through an interface
- Facsimile documents of DE, DD, EP and WO documents as well as optionally the corresponding bibliographic data
- We provide you weekly with the current data and documents of the German IP rights in the form of data packages
Detailed information on our IT developments and e-services is available on our website.
E-filing of IP applications and
Search