German Patent and Trade Mark Office
central authority in the field of intellectual property law in Germany
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 whom about 700 were patent examiners.
Function and status
The DPMA is the central authority in the field of intellectual property protection in Germany. Its responsibilities include the granting of patents for the registration of industrial designs, trademarks and designs, as well as informing the public about existing industrial property rights. A recognised partner of the DPMA is the Patentinformationszentrum (Patent Information Centre), united in the Deutscher Patentinformationszentren e.V (German Patent Information Centres Association).
The legal basis of the German Patent and Trademark Office is § 26 of the Patentgesetz (German Patents Act).
History
Before 1877, patent protection in the German states rested on separate laws and administrative procedures, with no single system shared across the future empire. The first unified German Patent Act, passed on 25 May 1877, replaced that patchwork with a common legal framework for the empire and created a central authority responsible for examining applications and granting patents. That authority, the Kaiserliches Patentamt (Imperial Patent Office), opened in Berlin on 1 July 1877, the date from which applications under the new Reich-wide system could first be filed. The application for German patent no.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “German Patent and Trade Mark Office” is central authority in the field of intellectual property law in Germany. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through German, Patent and Trade, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “central authority in the field of intellectual property law in Germany” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q314296. VIAF identifies the subject as 124662453. The Library of Congress control number is no99092297. Authority coordinates are 48.132, 11.583. 4 of 7 selected statements include explicit references; 4 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2006 and 1877.
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This entry incorporates text from “German Patent and Trade Mark Office” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.