Accessibility

The German Patent and Trade Mark Office (DPMA) endeavours to make its websites accessible, based on the national laws on the implementation of Directive (EU) 2016/2102 of the European Parliament and of the Council, the Act on Equal Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities (Behindertengleichstellungsgesetz) and the Accessible Information Technology Ordinance (Barrierefreie-Informationstechnik-Verordnung). We are currently migrating our website to a new content management system. As part of this process, we are working to further improve the accessibility of our website. As the migration is not yet fully complete, there may still be some limitations regarding accessibility. The following statement of the DPMA was prepared or revised on 09.11.2026.

The forms available on our website https://www.dpma.de are accessible. Most by far of the PDF files on our website are accessible, too. Non-accessible PDF files, most of which have been created by third parties rather than the DPMA, are a rare exception. In these cases, it is hardly possible or very difficult to implement the content in an accessible manner, which means that an accessible implementation would be an unreasonable burden pursuant to section 12a (6) of the Act on Equal Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities. If you need any of these PDF files, please contact us. We will then work out with you how we can make the content of a DPMA PDF file available to you. PDF files created by third parties are posted on our website only in exceptional cases.
The videos we post have subtitles or an accompanying text. In the case of newly posted videos, we try to provide subtitles as soon as possible after the publication.

Most of the PDF files on the sites https://register.dpma.de and https://depatisnet.dpma.de are not accessible. In these cases, it is hardly possible or very difficult to implement the content in an accessible manner, which means that an accessible implementation would be an unreasonable burden pursuant to section 12a (6) of the Act on Equal Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities. The INPADOC legal status data in DEPATISnet is not implemented in an accessible manner. This data is provided by the European Patent Office. If you need this data, please contact the European Patent Office.

At present, not all images and graphic elements have alternative text. The relevant descriptions will be added gradually as we migrate our website to a new content management system.

We provide a glossary for our website. Unfortunately, due to the migration of our website to a new content management system, glossary entries cannot currently be displayed on the pages. We are working on a solution. Until then, you can find glossary entries directly in the glossary.

Please contact us if you have general questions about accessibility or if you identify accessibility issues on our website https://www.dpma.de. Please use the relevant feedback form or contact us by e-mail, post or telephone:

Deutsches Patent- und Markenamt
Referat 2.1.1
Zweibrückenstraße 12
80331 München
Telephone: +49 89 2195-2606
E-mail: internetredaktion@dpma.de

The Federal Government Commissioner for Matters relating to Persons with Disabilities provides arbitration in accordance with section 16 of the Act on Equal Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities. The purpose of the Arbitration Service (for contact details see below) is to settle disputes between persons with disabilities and federal agencies.

If you feel disadvantaged on account of insufficient accessibility of our website https://www.dpma.de , you can contact the Arbitration Service. However, we would like to ask you to contact the DPMA first so that we can clarify the issue together and eliminate a possible disadvantage as soon as possible.

Schlichtungsstelle nach dem Behindertengleichstellungsgesetz bei dem Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für die Belange von Menschen mit Behinderungen
Mauerstaße 53
10117 Berlin
Telephone: +49 33 18 527 2805
E-mail: info@schlichtungsstelle-bgg.de
Website: www.schlichtungsstelle-bgg.de