Organisation

Five Departments

The German Patent and Trade Mark Office (DPMA) has five departments:

Departments Patents 1/I and Patents 1/II

The patent area is divided into two departments:

Department 1/I (Mechanical Engineering and Mechanical Technology) and
Department 1/II (Electrical Engineering, Chemistry and Physics)

About 700 patent examiners examine patent applications, grant patents and deal with oppositions against granted patents.

In addition, the duties of the Departments 1 comprise:

searches for the state of the art of a patent application outside the examination procedure,
arbitration proceedings under the Law on Employees' Inventions,
cancellation proceedings in relation to utility models and searches for the state of the art in relation to utility models, and
training of patent attorney candidates.

Department 2 - Information

Department 2 informs the public about industrial property rights. The enquiry units provide information on the steps of a patent, utility model, trade mark or design application. Department 2 also manages the databases of the DPMA and provides support to users regarding IP searches.

The Technical Information Centre Berlin (TIZ) is a branch of the DPMA which is also part of Department 2. The TIZ coordinates cooperation with the more than 20 patent information centres (PIZ) throughout Germany.

The library is integrated in Department 2. It contains more than 1.1 million publications in the field of science, technology and industrial property rights and more than 50 million patent documents.

Staff members of Department 2 are also responsible for the operation and further development of the IT systems and applications used by the office, such as the electronic case file.

Department 3 - Trade Marks, Utility Models, Designs

The more than 400 staff members of Department 3 deal with trade mark, utility model and design procedures at the office locations in Munich and Jena.

In the trade mark area, they examine applications for national trade marks. They take decisions on oppositions filed against trade mark registrations and in trade mark cancellation procedures. In addition, they manage international registrations of marks. File administration of the approximately 745,000 registered trade marks is managed at the Jena Sub-Office. The designs unit is also located at the Jena Sub-Office.

In addition, Department 3 processes utility model and topography applications and decides on requests for the cancellation of utility models.

Department 4 - Administration and Law

The staff members of Department 4 - Administration and Law manage the typical administrative tasks including:

personnel administration and personnel development
training
internal service
budget
organisation
statistics

Furthermore, the Department Administration and Law deals with general legal issues (such as checking contracts between the DPMA and service providers) and legal questions relating to national and international industrial property protection, copyright and patent attorneys and representatives matters.
The Department Administration and Law is also in charge of government supervision of collecting societies.

Arbitration Boards

The following bodies are part of the organisation of the German Patent and Trade Mark Office:

Arbitration Board under the Law on Employees' Inventions,
Arbitration Board under the Copyright Administration Law.