German Patent and Trade Mark Office

SME information pages: How to protect your innovations

Intellectual property rights are essential to effectively protect innovations and brands from theft and counterfeiting. You can find out what you can do as a small or medium-sized enterprise (SME) to protect your business inventions and what role patents, trade marks, designs, copyrights and trade secrets play in this on our SME information pages.

Other duties of the DPMA

• Supervision of collective management organisations (CMOs) and authorised entities
• Arbitration Board under the CMO Act
• Arbitration Board under the Employee Inventions Act
• Patent attorney training
• Register of Out-Of-Commerce Works

Patent information centres: all-round service providers in the field of industrial property protection

The DPMA closely cooperates with patent information centres all over Germany. They offer all those interested in IP comprehensive information on industrial property protection, including initial consultations for inventors, training courses and search support.