A glance at 2023 - DPMA Annual Report 2023 (2024)

The DPMA will move into a new office building in Munich, probably in late 2024/early 2025. The building is located on Anzinger Straße near the Ostbahnhof railway station. In addition to our main building on Zweibrückenstraße, we will thus establish a second large office in Munich and leave the other offices in Munich.

Directorate General 1 (Patents and Utility Models) will move into the building. This means that staff from patent examination and patent administration will share a place for work and encounter in Munich. The new building will also offer hearing rooms, library services and a hall, e.g. for events of Directorate General 1 such as qualifying examinations for patent attorneys. We look forward to our new office in the agile and innovative Werksviertel, a growing and constantly changing district of Munich!

The quality of the products and services is an important reason for the great trust applicants have in the DPMA. Consequently, the quality of patent examination is our main priority; at the same time, we focus on the intensive technical and substantive examination — without too many formalities. In view of this, we have introduced several quality assurance measures in the examination procedure, effective immediately. To improve the quality and consistency of first office actions, we had previously prepared a template that is now regularly used as a basis for the review of first office actions. Furthermore, we have developed a new training course relating to search strategies that uses AI to teach how to use certain search tools in the most effective possible way, and we have integrated new functions to document searches in the electronic IP case file.

To identify and define options for additional future improvements, we aim to conduct customer surveys on the satisfaction with first office actions.

Industry, technology, teaching and intellectual property (IP) become more and more interconnected: For a short time, Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt (THI) has offered the master’s course Patent Engineering (M.Sc.), the only one of its kind in Germany. The special thing about that programme is the combination of technical contents and IP knowledge — a novelty in Germany’s higher education landscape.

The DPMA appreciates and promotes this development. Within the scope of a cooperation agreement with the THI, the DPMA provides the THI with information or guest contributions of its staff and intensely promotes the comprehensive IP offering of the THI, e.g. the Ingolstadt Patent Day or the regularly held Ingolstadt Patent Talks, on its social media channels.

In this way, we make an important contribution to raising awareness of IP already at higher education establishments and universities. Information about what else we do for educational establishments can be found here (in German). Feel free to contact us!

An up-to-date version of our trade fair and event calendar is available on our website.

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