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Search rooms

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The inquiry units, search rooms, document receiving services and cash desks of the DPMA are open. For details, see the opening hours

Munich receiving service, including the cash desk, is closed until further notice. Mail items are accepted at the gate, cash deposits are currently not possible.

Face-to-face advice and initial consultations for inventors are provided subject to appointment only. Outside our opening hours, you can use the automated mailboxes in Berlin and Jena. In Munich, you can hand in any mail and items at the reception desk. 
 
The customer service staff can be reached by telephone and e-mail at:  
Service area Telephone E-mail 
Central Customer Care and Services  089 2195-1000 info@dpma.de 
Hotline for database users 089 2195-3435 datenbanken@dpma.de 

Using search options

The two search rooms of the DPMA in München and at the Information and Service Centre in Berlin also form part of our Customer Care and Services. Irrespective of whether you wish to search for specific IP rights or the state of the art, the staff of the search rooms will help you choosing the appropriate search tools and explain how to use these tools.

Please make an appointment for your visit (contact details to make an appointment).

You have access to the following information sources in the search rooms:

  • the publicly accessible official register of German patents, utility models, trade marks and designs DPMAregister with up-to-date legal and procedural status information and file inspection in patent and utility model procedures
  • the publicly accessible DPMA-internal electronic document archive of German and foreign patent documents DEPATISnet, DEPATIS work stations (access to the "search file" of the patent examiners) as well as conventional collections of patent documents on other types of media
  • national and foreign patent, trade mark and design gazettes
  • trade mark databases and encyclopedias
  • design index, arranged by classes of goods (the index comprises the German register (index) cards from 1988 to 2003)
  • search tools such as the classifications of the individual IP rights (for example, International Patent Classification)
  • collections of standards, such as DIN, ISO, ASTM - it is not allowed to copy most of the documents
  • the DPMA’s search portal externer Link DPMAprimo for searches for printed and electronic literature from the DPMA stocks with focus on technology, science and industrial property, including automatic integration of an external data index for searches in a huge range of scientific literature with multiple hundreds of millions of data records

The search rooms are reference libraries. All kinds of documents may be used there, but no documents may be taken out of the search rooms.

Munich search room

The Munich search room offers six DEPATIS work stations and three Internet stations. If you wish to use a DEPATIS work station, we recommend that you make an appointment by calling
+49 89 2195-3435 or by sending an e-mail to datenbanken@dpma.de, specifying "Terminvereinbarung" in the subject line.
The opening hours of the Munich search room on our web site Opening hours.

Berlin search room

In addition to DEPATIS stations, several CD-ROM workstations are available in the Berlin search room for searching for German and foreign patents, utility models, designs and trade marks.
The patent document collections from Eastern Europe and the USSR/Russia (from 1924) are also worthy of special mention. As a rule, these documents are not included in DEPATIS. In addition, the DPMA-IDZ Berlin provides numerous information resources for searches for searches for historical IP rights.
Please make an appointment for your visit (contact details for making an appointment)

Terms and conditions

The terms and conditions of use of our search rooms are available for inspection in the search rooms. An overview of possible charges is available in the (in German).

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Picture: iStock.com/jacobammentorplund

Last updated: 10 January 2024