Patents, patent filing, patent law

An invention can be protected with a patent. It is possible to protect both objects, apparatus and circuits and also methods such as working methods or methods of manufacture for producing a specific material. Depending on the formulation and filing of a patent application, a request for examination must be made at a certain time (at the German Patent and Trademark Office, within seven years) in order to bring the patent application to grant and thereby acquire the registered patent which ultimately can only then be enforced.

In the examination procedure, the examiner at the Patent Office will usually cite a number of documents and then frequently come to the (preliminary) conclusion that the subject matter of the particular invention is allegedly made obvious by the known prior art and thus is not patentable.

This office action must be examined critically and the examiner must be convinced that the cited documents actually mean something quite different, or the patent application must be revised and a new refined patent claim 1 must be filed. However, this may only contain features which have already been disclosed in the original application documents.

In this way a grant of patent can frequently still be achieved despite a negative first office action.

For the patent applications or granted patents, annual fees must be paid to the Patent office, a maximum term of 20 years being possible.

You can find further information in our leaflet on patents and utility models. In addition, we have prepared a leaflet on the differences between patents and utility models.

Our office has many years of experience in all issues of patent law. In our offices in Bremen, Hanover and Oldenburg we shall be pleased to advise you on patent applications, patent infringements, patent infringement proceedings, opposition proceedings and nullity suits.

We have already prosecuted a large number of patent applications and brought them to grant and have extensive experience in the associated examination procedures, opposition proceedings, appeal proceedings and also in nullity suits. We have also processed a large number of patent infringement processes as patent attorneys both on the plaintiff’s side and on the defendant’s side.

If you wish to know how many patents we have administered in the databases of the German Patent and Trademark Office as representative, click here and enter the following under expert search: VTR = Jabbusch.