Patents

Intellectual property needs effective protection - both nationally and internationally. This is a crucial issue affecting the survival of our forward-looking and technology-based economy; without it, innovations cannot win through on the market.

Without effective protection for intellectual property, a globalised world economy cannot function. The positive efforts to improve the protection and enforce intellectual property rights at international level must therefore be continued and developed further.

The mechanisms to protect intellectual property rights must be balanced. The right balance must be maintained between stimulation of innovative activities on the one hand and social participation in technical advances on the other. This also touches on issues of antitrust and competition law.

EU patent

German companies in particular will be able to reap rapid benefits from simple and cheap EU patents. The conclusion of the legislative procedure for the EU patent at European level marks a major step forward. It is now important for the European agreements to be ratified as quickly as possible and thus transferred into national law. Find out more about the Unitary Patent here.

WIPANO

WIPANO is the German abbreviation for "knowledge and technology transfer via patents and standards", and the WIPANO project brings together various programmes to promote the patenting and exploitation of inventions and to fund innovative (research) projects on standardisation. Our support for patenting aims to raise the awareness of the scientific community, industry and the general public of the great significance of patents and property rights. The programme supports higher education institutions and non-university research establishments as they develop concepts for the handling, safeguarding and exploitation of their intellectual property, drawing on the expertise of experienced patent exploitation agencies. We give financial assistance to our small and medium-sized enterprises to help them safeguard and exploit their innovative ideas and inventions, thus making it easier for them to familiarise themselves with the issue of intellectual and industrial property rights.