Is innovation the driving force behind your business? Our patent attorneys can help you protect your ideas and enforce your intellectual property rights.
Is innovation the driving force behind your business? Our patent attorneys can help you protect your ideas and enforce your intellectual property rights.
Protecting your products and know-how through patents, trademarks and designs is critical to your business success, in a globalized world.
By protecting your innovation or trademark, you can protect yourself from imitators, ensure your competitiveness and make the most of your investment in research and development to consolidate your market position.
Don’t leave the protection of your intellectual property to chance, leave it to
f & e patent® – whether in Germany, Europe or worldwide.
Innovations are an alliance with the future.
Protect your innovations with a professional patent or utility model application. We can help you through the application and examination process and ensure that your innovations are protected to the fullest extent possible.
From trademark searches and filings to registration, we ensure a smooth process and the protection and enforcement of your trademark.
Our patent law firm can provide you with expert advice and representation in litigation if your rights have been infringed.
We can advise and assist you in all matters relating to employee inventions and inventor remuneration. In the event of a dispute, our specialist lawyers will represent you before the arbitration board or in court.
Trust us to protect the aesthetic features of your products. We can help you with design searches and registration.
Leave the protection of your new plant varieties to us. We will take care of filing the application with the Federal Plant Variety Office, securing you exclusive rights to your variety.
We can help you keep abreast of your competitors' patent activities domestically and internationally. We also monitor third party trademark registrations and applications to identify and address potential conflicts with your trademarks.
We offer comprehensive prior art searches carried out by our experienced patent attorneys. A search is particularly useful for drafting a patent application and for oppositions against third party patents. We also provide searches for freedom-to-operate opinions.
Our patent law firm can assist you in adversarial proceedings based on our many years of in-depth expertise. We can also advise you on the validity of intellectual property rights and provide expert opinions.
The protection of your intellectual property is the focus of f & e patent®. Each case is handled personally by a patent attorney. Our team of highly qualified scientific patent attorneys and specialist staff work closely together – especially in multidisciplinary matters. Our main areas of expertise include all fields of chemistry, biochemistry, pharmacy and process engineering. However, through our network we are able to cover any other field. On an international level, we also work with expert colleagues from all over the world.
We can support your business, whatever its size, both nationally and internationally.
Our office is located to the east of Cologne, close to the leading European patent litigation court in Düsseldorf. We are also close to the German Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA), the European Patent Office (EPO) in Munich and its branches in The Hague and Berlin.
The value of an idea lies in the using of it.
A patent provides a high level of protection for technical inventions and gives the owner the exclusive right to prevent others from using, making, selling or importing their innovation without permission.
Applications are filed nationally with the German Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA), regionally with the European Patent Office (EPO) or internationally, depending on the client's wishes. The patentability of the claimed invention is examined by the Offices. The claimed subject matter must be new, involve an inventive step and have industrial applicability.
The term of protection is 20 years from the date of filing. The precise wording of the patent claims is crucial for valid patent protection, and our firm will be happy to assist you.
Patent attorneys are specialists in their field, having undergone specialized training that includes both legal and scientific or technical knowledge. It is only through this qualification that complex inventions can be legally protected.
In a patent law firm, you will benefit from a team with multidisciplinary expertise that will ensure the best possible protection for any invention - because the patenting process is complicated and requires a great deal of experience and expertise.
Technical inventions can be protected by both patents and utility models, although processes can only be protected by patents. Patents provide protection for up to twenty years, while utility models can be extended to a maximum of ten years. Unlike a patent, a utility model is an unexamined property right, as the utility model application is not examined for the essential requirements of protection - novelty and inventive step - during the registration procedure. The procedure is therefore faster and less expensive - but there is a higher risk of later cancellation. We will be happy to advise you on the appropriate protection for your invention.
A registered trademark is important for securing your own use of the product or company name in the future. A trademark is used to identify your company's goods and/or services. Without trademark protection, others could register the same or a similar trademark and interfere with or even prohibit the use of your own trademark.