Getting started

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Intellectual Property is managed by National or International Organisations. There is for example the World Organisation for Intellectual Property (WIPO). Also regional Organisations like the European Patent Office (EPO) and national offices exist (e.g. DPMA for Germany).

Why do intellectual property rights exist?

Freedom of imitation:

In many countries of the world there is freedom of imitation. A product, a process or a technology may be imitated if no property right exists

1. overview of property rights:

Patent documents (disclosure, patent and utility model documents) are excluded from copyright protection from the time of their official publication by § 5 (2) of the German Copyright Act (UrhG). However, you must quote the source correctly when publishing them.

What is a patent?

Conditions to get a Patent?

There are some conditions that must be fulfilled to get a patent application!

1. Novelty – the exact invention does not exist earlier

2. Inventive – There must be an inventive step over previous state of the art!

3. Commercial applicable – Easy the overcome this condition!

4. technical – Your invention must be somehow technical (no formulas)

To check if the Invention is inventive is a bit more complicated! Here the European Patent office says the following:

Sometimes it is hard to say what is state of the art!

There are some exceptions from patentability

Generally all inventions that fulfill the conditions of patentability can be granted a patent!

In the european Patent convention only some fields are excluded!

Further information

Further Information:

Good info material can be found at the IP helpdesk:

http://www.iprhelpdesk.eu/services

Especially the Guides give you an easy introduction to different topic related to IP:

http://www.iprhelpdesk.eu/IP-Guides

http://www.iprhelpdesk.eu/sites/default/files/documents/EU-IPR-Guide-IP-in-Europe-EN.pdf

Also the EPO offers good learning material at its website (e.g. IP basics learning kit):

https://www.epo.org/learning-events/materials/kit/download.html

A Good introduction on Patents is the guide for applicants from the EPO:

https://www.epo.org/applying/european/Guide-for-applicants/html/e/index.html

The Legal basis for European patent applications is the European patent convention (EPC):

https://www.epo.org/law-practice/legal-texts/epc.html

Really detailed information about special questions on the EPC (Guidelines):

https://www.epo.org/law-practice/legal-texts/guidelines.html

Full Video course with lots of additional Information can be found on our course platform or on Udemy!

Our overview Video