German patent law is mainly governed by the ''Patents Act'' (german: Patentgesetz) and the
European Patent Convention
The European Patent Convention (EPC), also known as the Convention on the Grant of European Patents of 5 October 1973, is a multilateral treaty instituting the European Patent Organisation and providing an autonomous legal system according to ...
. A patent covering Germany can be obtained through four different routes: through the direct filing of a national patent application with the
German Patent and Trade Mark Office
The German Patent and Trade Mark Office (german: Deutsches Patent- und Markenamt; abbreviation: DPMA) is the German national patent office, with headquarters in Munich, and offices in Berlin and Jena. In 2006 it employed 2556 people, of which ab ...
(german: Deutsches Patent- und Markenamt) (direct national route), through the filing of a
European patent application
The European Patent Convention (EPC), also known as the Convention on the Grant of European Patents of 5 October 1973, is a multilateral treaty instituting the European Patent Organisation and providing an autonomous legal system according to w ...
(European route), or through the filing of an international application under the
Patent Cooperation Treaty
The Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) is an international patent law treaty, concluded in 1970. It provides a unified procedure for filing patent applications to protect inventions in each of its contracting states. A patent application filed und ...
followed by the entry into either the European phase or the national (German) phase of said international application (Euro-PCT route). The German patent has a
term
Term may refer to:
* Terminology, or term, a noun or compound word used in a specific context, in particular:
**Technical term, part of the specialized vocabulary of a particular field, specifically:
***Scientific terminology, terms used by scient ...
of 20 years.
Litigation
The German patent litigation system is one of the few patent systems in which the issue of
patent infringement and of
patent validity are dealt with by different courts. The district courts deal with infringement, whereas the
Federal Patent Court (German: ''Bundespatentgericht'') is in charge of deciding the validity of patents.
Such a system is sometimes dubbed a "bifurcation system."
See also
*
Copyright law of Germany
German authors' right or ''Deutsches Urheberrecht'' is codified in the ''Gesetz über Urheberrecht und verwandte Schutzrechte'' (also referred to as ''Urhebergesetz'' or ''Urheberrechtsgesetz'' and abbreviated ''UrhG''). An official translation ...
* ''
Rote Taube'' ("Red Dove"), a landmark decision of the Federal Court of Justice of Germany (Bundesgerichtshof) (X ZB 15/67, 27 Mar. 1969)
References
External links
Patent Act
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