You can search the DPMAregister and DEPATISnet databases online at any time; DPMAregister also allows you file inspections. Search assistance is available by phone or e-mail. In Berlin and Munich, you can also receive search assistance on site. Our Customer Care and Services will be happy to arrange an appointment with you.

In cooperation with the Chamber of Patent Attorneys, various institutions in many cities across Germany offer free initial consultations for inventors provided by experienced patent attorneys who advise you on your application. In Munich and Berlin, these consultations take place at the DPMA. Lawyers are also available to answer your questions on non-technical IP rights.

To make an appointment, please contact the Central Customer Care and Services in good time by calling +49 89 2195-1000. You may also send an e-mail to info@dpma.de. Please indicate the following information in the subject line: “Appointment — consultation for inventors in Munich” or “Appointment — consultation for inventors in Berlin” (depending on where the appointment is supposed to take place). For further information, please go to our webpages.

Our staff in Munich and Berlin regularly offer practical IP workshops and seminars. This way, we aim to empower small and medium-sized enterprises in particular, but also interested private persons, lawyer’s offices or chambers of industry and commerce to provide IP basics and deepen their relevant knowledge. In addition, we intend to create easy access to searches in our DPMAregister and DEPATISnet databases. In 2024, our efforts in this regard focused on the online services of DEPATISnet, where we implemented a new IPC application, to name just one example. The workshops on our search options will also be showcased at events such as the PATINFO or the DPMAnutzerforum.

Have we aroused your interest? For our current range of workshops and seminars, please visit our webpages.

It is quite new, but already in great demand: with the lecture service of the DPMA the interested wider public can ask for DPMA lecturers who cover the various topics that our office handles. We offer tailored lectures, workshops and seminars that provide engaging content about patents, utility models, trade marks as well as designs, search options and further IP questions. Numerous tours of our office buildings in Munich and Berlin give interesting insights into the DPMA’s wide range of duties and its exciting history. More than 500 guests, mainly from universities and institutions of higher education, visited us online or in person in 2024. This proves how important our service is. Please feel free to contact us! Further information can be found here (in German).

If you want to find out more about the services of the DPMA, you can obtain information on IP protection on different channels and in various formats — and almost always in two languages (German and English). We offer you comprehensive information on patents, utility models, trade marks and designs, but also on searches, our electronic services and various events on our website, on our social media channels or via various print formats. We are increasingly focussing on digital services, but are still keeping an eye on the print world as well.

A number of brochures are available both online and as printed bound versions; the annual report is available in a completely digital version. On our LinkedIn channel, you will find current information about the DPMA as well as interesting short news items of a more general nature. And on YouTube we post tutorials and valuable background information on IP rights, searches and events. Feel free to follow us!

In addition to our usual news — announcements, important notices and notices of the President — and the traditional information on our IP rights, we also publish special information on IP protection and interesting facts from research and technology. For this purpose, we issue various newsletters and special publications, such as our “DPMAinformativ” series for special topics on patent information and, last but not least, our monthly journal Blatt für Patent-, Muster- und Zeichenwesen (BlPMZ), which is dedicated to legal issues, but above all, selected decisions of the courts and notices on the representative system. On our website you can access these free publications as well as the latest issue of BlPMZ, which is published in co-operation with Carl Heymanns Verlag. The monthly issue is free of charge, the annual subscription is subject to a fee.

The DPMAregister and DEPATISnet databases are freely accessible and can be used free of charge. In these databases, you can search patents, utility models, trade marks and designs. DPMAregister enables you to view the DPMA’s register of legal and procedural status information; DEPATISnet provides you with an overview of the state of the art worldwide. With DPMAkurier, you can monitor IP rights and receive the results automatically by e-mail. DPMAconnectPlus enables you to automatically retrieve all official register and publication data from DPMAregister online and to download patent and utility model specifications from the DEPATIS document archive.

Trade fairs are hotspots for innovation and development. But how well known are IP rights and their limitations? At trade fairs, we realise time and again that the need for information is high. What are IP rights, what do they have to do with me and my product and how is an IP right filed at all? Regardless of whether we are on site with an exhibition stand or travelling with mobile teams, there is always room for interesting discussions that give us the opportunity to provide people and enterprises with helpful information. At the same time, our efforts have a preventive effect against product piracy and raise awareness of how to deal with counterfeiting: a win-win situation for everyone. We look forward to meeting you at a trade fair — you can find the current trade fair schedule for 2025 in our trade fair calendar.

We know that there is strength in numbers. For many years now, our cooperation with the patent information centres (PIZ) has proven its worth. As our exclusive regional partners, the patent information centres are located throughout Germany and provide a wealth of valuable information on IP rights and how to search for them. They also provide advice on IP strategies and options for utilisation. Their entire service portfolio, which is primarily aimed at SMEs, start-ups, founders and the university sector, can be found here.

You are not satisfied with our services? Please let us know. Send an e-mail to info@dpma.de or a letter with your concerns by post. Please note: contacting our complaints management does not replace the required input and answers in IP proceedings. Here, the rules and procedures of the respective IP rights apply. Please adhere to all provisions so that you will not suffer any disadvantages.

Your general written complaints will be analysed and your request will be answered in close cooperation with all departments involved. This often reveals potential for improvement. Thank you for drawing our attention to this.

• 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: Search requests that should not be saved in the history can now be deleted with a trash can icon.

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
• NEW: Product branch version 4.0 with technical updates, including updating the software libraries used to the latest versions and more efficient software updates

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
• NEW: Merging and exchanging monitoring in DPMAkurier

• 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