Annual Report 2016 German Patent and Trade Mark Office Annual Report 2016Annual at a Glance
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Annual Report 2016 German Patent and Trade Mark Office Annual 2016 Report At a glance Changes Industrial property rights 2015 2016 in % Patents Applications 1 66,897 67,898 + 1.5 Examination procedures concluded 33,495 35,673 + 6.5 - published decisions to grant 14,795 15,652 + 5.8 a patent Patents in force at the end of the year 2 129,550 129,511 - 0.0 Applications Trade marks 73,479 72,807 - 0.9 (national and international) National marks Applications 68,951 69,340 + 0.6 Registration procedures concluded 65,723 75,501 + 14.9 - with registration 46,526 52,194 + 12.2 Trade marks in force at the end of 797,317 804,618 + 0.9 the year International marks Requests for grant of protection 4,528 3,467 - 23.4 in Germany Grants of protection 3,743 3,426 - 8.5 Utility models Applications 14,274 14,024 - 1.8 Registration procedures concluded 14,199 14,324 + 0.9 - with registration 12,256 12,441 + 1.5 Utility models in force at the end of 85,162 83,183 - 2.3 the year Designs Designs applied for 57,741 54,588 - 5.5 Registration procedures concluded 54,417 52,966 - 2.7 - with registration 50,765 49,113 - 3.3 Registered designs in force at the end 313,696 313,296 - 0.1 of the year 1 Patent applications at the DPMA and PCT patent applications upon their entry into the national phase 2 Including patents granted by the European Patent Office (EPO) with effect in the Federal Republic of Germany, a total of 615,404 patents were valid in Germany in 2016. Budget of the German Patent and Trade Mark Office and Changes 2015 2016 the Federal Patent Court (in million euros) in % Income 381.0 394.4 + 3.5 Expenditure 257.7 272.9 + 5.9 including personnel 147.1 151.9 + 3.3 Personnel of the German Patent and Trade Mark Office Staff 2,533 2,584 + 2.0 Press and Public Relations Arbitration Board under Internal Communications, Key Support to the Employee Inventions Act Senior Management, Strategic Management President Arbitration Board under the Act on Collective Vice-President Central Controlling, Cost/Performance Management Organisations (CMO Act) Accounting, Quality Management DPMAinnovativ Planning Staff Internal Audit, Corruption Prevention and Office Data Protection Directorate General 1 Directorate General 3 Directorate General 2 Directorate General 4 Patents and Trade Marks and Information Administration and Law Utility Models Designs Technical Information Centre Jena Sub-Office Berlin Contents Preface . .3 Patents . .4 BRIEFLY EXPLAINED: Autonomous driving . 11 200 YEARS AGO: On the bicentenary of the birth of Carl Zeiss . 12 IN FOCUS: Selected fields of technology . 13 INTERVIEWS: Interview with Günter Hubert . 16 Utility models . 18 Trade marks . 22 IN FOCUS: Reform of European trade mark law . 28 110 YEARS AGO: Osmium and wolfram lend their names to a new trade mark . 29 Indications of geographical origin . 30 Designs . 32 Supervision under the Act on Collective Management Organisations . 38 Patent attorney training . 42 Arbitration boards at the German Patent and Trade Mark Office . 44 Customer care and information services . 48 INTERVIEWS: Interview with Petra Maier and Hildegard Schmoeckel . 52 National cooperation partners . 54 IT developments and e-services . 56 BRIEFLY EXPLAINED: IT service continuity management . 59 INTERVIEWS: Interview with Christine Moosbauer . 60 Staff . 62 IN FOCUS: What opportunities does the “higher intermediate civil service” at the DPMA offer? . 64 INSIDE: “Power fitness” at the DPMA . 65 Our finances . 66 BRIEFLY EXPLAINED: Cost/performance accounting at the DPMA. 67 International cooperation . 68 BRIEFLY EXPLAINED: Best practices – exchange of experience in a global network of offices . 73 Our projects . 74 Events in 2016 . 76 IN MEMORIAM: Professor Dr Artur Fischer. 81 Inventor and innovation awards . 82 A glance at 2017 . 84 Statistics. 86 The German Patent and Trade Mark Office: your centre of expertise for powerful IP rights The German Patent and Trade Mark Office (DPMA) be- Our library with approximately one million publications longs to the portfolio of the Federal Ministry of Justice about science, technology and industrial property rights and Consumer Protection and is the German centre of as well as more than 71 million patent documents is among expertise in the field of industrial property protection. the largest scientific libraries in Germany. Our customers We grant patents and register trade marks, utility models are free to use our library for searches. DPMAprimo, our as well as designs: these are industrial property rights that search portal for non-patent literature, can be used to search we also manage. Our statutory duty includes information in the DPMA’s stock of literature as well as, additionally, of the public about patents, trade marks, etc. more than 600 million publications not licensed in full text through one interface. We have more than 2,500 staff at four locations in Ger- many: The staff of Directorate General 2 are also responsible for the operation and further development of all of the Munich DPMA headquarters including senior DPMA’s IT systems. This includes the IT systems for management of the DPMA, administration e-filing and electronic processing of applications and as well as patent, trade mark and utility other documents in IP procedures among other things. model divisions Jena another trade mark division, the design Trade Marks and Designs (Directorate General 3) division as well as administrative units In the trade mark area, the staff examine national trade mark applications and enter them into the Trade Mark Berlin Technical Information Centre Register if the requirements are met. Furthermore, they deal with oppositions by third parties against trade mark Hauzenberg Customer Care and Services among registrations and decide in trade mark cancellation pro- other things ceedings. They also have a number of duties in procedures relating to the international registration of trade marks. The design area carries out examination of applications, Patents and Utility Models (Directorate General 1) management of registered designs and decides on appli- More than 800 staff from all fields of technology and cations for determination or declaration of invalidity. science work as patent examiners in the five clusters of Directorate General 1 (Mechanical Engineering, Mechanical Technology, Electrical Engineering, Chemistry and Physics). Administration and Law (Directorate General 4) They assess the patentability of inventions described in The staff of Directorate General 4 primarily manage the applications, grant patents and deal with oppositions. typical administrative tasks. This includes, for example, Directorate General 1 is also responsible for patent ad- processing of personnel, budget and legal affairs, fa- ministration as well as for all procedures in the field of cility management and organisation of administrative utility models and topographies. procedures. Directorate General 4 is also responsible for the DPMA’s international relations and cooperation, for matters concerning patent attorneys and other agents Information (Directorate General 2) as well as for the supervision of collective management The staff of Directorate General 2 provide information organisations under the Act on Collective Management to the public about industrial property rights and the Organisations (Verwertungsgesellschaftengesetz). individual steps of the application procedure for patents, utility models, trade marks and designs. They manage and update our databases and provide search support to users. The duties also include responsibility for the German patent information centres. 2 PREFACE Annual Report 2016 Annual Report 2016 PREFACE 3 This Annual Report will give you varied insights into writing the texts, the authors always kept the interests the duties of our office and provide a look back at the of our customers in mind. The annual report, whether events of the past year in the field of industrial property printed or electronic, is intended to offer our customers protection: legal reforms and procedural improvements, fast access to the required information. optimisation of services and strategic planning, ground- breaking court rulings and memorable anniversaries, Under various headings, for example, “IN Focus” or projects and organisation plans – the year 2016 presented “BriefLY EXPLaiNED”, selected topics, which we also numerous challenges to our office and its 2,584 staff. want to cover, are presented to you: autonomous driving, Even though, in our modern times, this word tends to be reform of trade mark law, IT service continuity manage- used as a euphemism for problems: whether challenges ment and much more. Let us surprise you with the wealth or problems, in the end, it is all about motivation. At any of interesting information that we have compiled for you! rate, we are happy that, due to the high motivation and the constant commitment of our staff, we can speak of Holders of IP rights, universities or enterprises with a challenges when we look back at 2016. Because challenges patent or trade mark portfolio, who want to reap the can be overcome, as is generally known, above all, by economic benefits of innovative research and develop- team effort and joint support. Given the work results, ment work, cannot do without an IP strategy. Defining it makes us glad and grateful to our colleagues that strategic goals, determining the relevant fields of action our office was again successful, in 2016, in meeting the and prioritising operational measures have long been challenges posed, in jointly developing optimal solutions a matter of course also for those holding a responsible and also in implementing them, in many cases. management position in a modern public authority. For the DPMA, our “strategic guiding principle” can be The German Patent and Trade Mark Office (DPMA) expressed in one sentence: as an examining office, we achieved exceedingly good results for 2016: patent grants support the innovation capacity and creativity of industry as well as trade mark registrations reached record highs.