Germany is the world’s fifth largest trademark office judged by the number of applications, according to WIPO statistics. Situated in Munich, the Deutsches Patent- und Markenamt (DPMA, or German Patent and Trademark Office) received more than 76,000 trademark applications in 2007, a rise of 5.3% on the previous year and proof of the continued attractiveness of national rights in the EU.
However, those figures only tell part of the story of the importance of Germany for brand owners. Community trade marks are also valid in Germany, as are international (Madrid Protocol) registrations designating the country. In total, some 1.4 million marks were protected in the country at the end of 2007, about 55% of them national marks, 30% CTMs and 15% international marks.
“In the years following the entry into force of the revised Trademark Law in 1995, we had a real trademark boom,” says Cornelia Rudloff-Schäffer, who has been head of trademarks, utility models and designs at the Office since October 2006. “Since a trademark is initially valid for 10 years, the effects of this boom have now surfaced again: both the number of renewals and the number of cancellations in the register increased.” She adds that reclassification notices have also risen, as many applicants have adapted their applications to the ninth edition of the Nice classification.
Rudloff-Schäffer heads a team of nearly 400, which includes 105 trademark examiners (75 of them in Munich, and 30 in a sub-office in Jena) of whom 34 are senior examiners who deal with objection cases. There are three examining divisions and one cancellation division, as well as sections for administration, initial processing and general trademark administration matters.
“It’s a very vivid area, very relevant to the real world, with lots of daily challenges-not just in the law but in management as well,” says Rudloff-Schäffer, who has spent most of her career in intellectual property. After a degree in law, politics and journalism from Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz and research at the Max Planck Institute and Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, she worked for 10 years at the Federal Ministry of Justice, where she covered IP issues including the German trademark regulation and ratification of the Madrid Protocol and represented the country in EU and WIPO discussions. In 2001, she returned to Munich and the DPMA, initially as head of the legal division.
She says that feedback from users indicates that most are happy with the performance of the trademark examination process. But there remain many challenges: “With regard to 2008, I’m looking forward to improvements in the timeliness of filing receipts, transparency of examination services and the speed of opposition procedures.” A recent successful project was the introduction of support for applicants in drawing up lists of goods and services. “Errors in the lists of goods and services are the most frequent cause of delayed processing of trademark applications. Since 2006 we have offered a special service to large applicants: they can draw up a list of goods and services in cooperation with our staff before filing. These approved lists can be adopted as they stand for further applications,” she explains.
Other recent innovations at the Office include the DPMAdirekt online filing service, introduced in October 2006, which offers immediate acknowledgement, faster processing and a 10 euro discount on the 300 euro filing fee. “Now that our customers have overcome their reluctance to change their habits, online application figures have been increasing,” Rudloff-Schäffer told the INTA Daily News. Another innovation, introduced two years ago, is DPMAmarken, a system used by all staff members to process trademark applications.
As one of the biggest of the European national offices, the DPMA provides a good example of how the three-way registration framework (national, European and international) can work well, giving users a choice of systems to use, depending on their needs and the size of their intended market. Some practitioners have voiced fears that the popularity of the Community trade mark, reinforced by proposed fee reductions, could upset this balance. Rudloff-Schäffer says this is a controversial area, with many different views to be considered, and in Germany it is a political matter handled by the Ministry. But she notes that “we are open-minded about discussions on future proposals concerning fee reductions as far as they benefit the users and provided that there is no negative impact on the quality of the service.” The decision about which route to use to file is “finally a marketing decision,” she says, with national offices suited to SMEs and those applicants who require rapid registration. But she stresses that other national offices in Europe may have different perspectives, and any changes will have to be agreed by member states at an EU level.
