No Property, No Innovation: Why Socialist Patent Systems Forfeit Prosperity – The USSR, the GDR and Cuba

Posted on July 4, 2026 by Dr. Dirk Franke

A patent grants its holder the right to exclude others from using an invention. At first glance this looks anti-social — yet it is one of the most effective engines of prosperity that modern economies possess. It turns an idea into a tradable asset, makes research financeable, attracts capital, and rewards not only whoever invents a new process but whoever brings it to market. Socialist planned economies abolished precisely this right to exclude — internally. In doing so, this article argues, they sacrificed a central driver of innovation and economic power. The three cases of the Soviet Union, the GDR and Cuba show the mechanism and its price.

The economic starting point: property rights create prosperity — including intangible ones

That secure, enforceable property rights are the foundation of prosperity is among the best-supported findings in institutional economics. Douglass North showed that societies grow rich precisely where rules reliably assign the returns of productive effort to those who generate them; Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson traced differences in national wealth to “inclusive” versus “extractive” institutions, at the centre of which sits the property regime. Hernando de Soto coined the term “dead capital” for the absence of formal title: values that exist but cannot be mobilised as collateral, tradable goods, or a basis for investment.

What holds for land holds, in the knowledge economy, all the more for intangible assets. The value of modern companies today lies overwhelmingly in intangibles — patents, brands, know-how, data. A patent is the legal title that makes an invention capable of being booked, licensed, pledged and sold in the first place. Devalue that title and the invention does not disappear — but the incentive to invest in it, commercialise it and scale it does. This is exactly where the weakness of the socialist model begins.

1. The Soviet Union: invent much, exploit little

After the October Revolution, the Soviet Union nationalised inventions and created, as a socialist alternative to the patent, the inventor’s certificate (avtorskoe svidetel’stvo): the invention became state property, while the inventor received recognition and remuneration — but no right to exclude. Patents survived only as a parallel institution, used almost exclusively by foreigners. The logic behind it was deliberately anti-capitalist: knowledge was to flow freely between state enterprises rather than being locked up behind monopoly rights.

From the standpoint of institutional economics this was a consequential design flaw. The system optimised for the number of inventions and for the free flow of information — and blanked out the decisive variable: the incentive to actually turn an invention into a better product or process. Because enterprises operated as monopolies, were measured on plan fulfilment rather than competition, and the inventor’s reward was capped, the drive to introduce novelties was missing. The result is well documented in the literature as the “Soviet innovation problem”: much was invented, too little implemented and diffused. Observers attributed to Soviet patent law a dogmatic mindset that inhibited innovation rather than fostering it. Later Russian scholarship speaks of an institutional mismatch — of lost opportunities to generate growth from knowledge that already existed.

The contradiction is telling: the very institution meant to liberate knowledge decoupled inventing from exploiting — and thereby stripped the economy of the feedback loop that, in the West, turns inventions into productivity.

2. The GDR: the natural experiment

No other case illustrates the thesis as vividly as the German division — a controlled experiment with a shared language, culture and industrial history that differed only in economic system. East German patent law knew two routes: the exclusive patent (Ausschließungspatent), which corresponded to the Western patent, and the economic patent (Wirtschaftspatent), which could be used by all state-designated enterprises while the inventor received only a remuneration — capped, after the 1963 amendment, at 30,000 Mark. The state steered the choice forcefully: filing an economic patent cost 20 Mark, an exclusive patent 250 Mark, whose annual fees ran up to thirty times higher. For inventions arising in publicly owned enterprises, only the economic patent was permitted in any case.

The outcome was a patent order that effectively abolished the right to exclude: of roughly 111,000 GDR patents at reunification, only about 14,000 — just under 13 percent — were exclusive patents. A large body of protective rights thus existed with no tradable market value. The reaction, once a real market appeared, is revealing: more than 19,000 holders applied to convert their economic patent into an exclusive one. The right to exclude others became valuable at precisely the moment there were competitors and prices.

The economic record of this system is unambiguous. The GDR was regarded as the most developed country of the Eastern Bloc — and still lagged: by the late 1980s its per-capita GDP fell short of West Germany’s by around 30 percent, and labour productivity at unification stood at only about a third of the Western level. According to estimates by Akerlof and colleagues, only around ten percent of the GDR workforce was employed in firms viable at world-market prices; the East German economy collapsed in 1990/91 on a scale unprecedented in modern economic history. Research links this weakness directly to the centrally planned system, which systematically inhibited innovation, distorted the allocation of resources and undermined long-term growth. Even three decades later, and despite enormous transfers, the East reaches only around two-thirds of the Western per-capita level on many measures. Two systems, one people — and a productivity gap whose root lay substantially in the missing regime of incentives and property.

3. Cuba: the exception that proves the rule

Cuba appears to be the counter-argument: a socialist state that is a monopolist domestically and yet ranks among the notable innovators of international biotechnology. The state umbrella corporation BioCubaFarma reports around 2,640 patents in Cuba and worldwide, of which roughly 2,438 are held outside Cuba, and has registered 765 products in 53 countries. Developments such as Heberprot-P for diabetic foot ulcers, the cancer immunotherapy CIMAvax-EGF, or the COVID vaccines Abdala and Soberana are protected by patents in numerous jurisdictions.

On closer inspection, however, Cuba confirms the thesis rather than refuting it — for three reasons.

First, the success is concentrated in a narrow, state-selected niche that has been fed with prioritised resources over decades. It is the product of concentrated subsidy, not of a broad innovation culture nourished by ownership incentives. Outside this “scientific pole,” the Cuban economy is marked by chronic stagnation and by hard-currency and supply crises.

Second — and this is the decisive point — Cuba patents almost exclusively abroad. At home, where the state alone produces, the right to exclude is worthless; inventions are used freely within the country’s own health system. The patent becomes valuable only where there are markets, competitors and paying demand: in exports, in licensing, in joint ventures with foreign capital, for instance in the Mariel special development zone. To draw prosperity from its inventions, Cuba must therefore reach into precisely those property-based market economies that its own system denies internally. Here the patent is an export and hard-currency instrument — proof that innovation only creates value once it plugs into a property order.

Third, even this island runs into its limits: biotechnology is extremely capital-intensive, and capital is scarce in Cuba; the US embargo, international regulatory hurdles and a deep currency crisis constrain the returns. A state can finance world-class research at isolated points — but without the capital-forming power of tradable property rights, it cannot turn that into broad, self-sustaining economic strength.

The mechanism of failure

Bring the three cases together and a clear pattern emerges. Where the right to exclude intangibles is absent, several chains of causation collapse — the same chains that, in market economies, convert inventions into prosperity:

  • No price signal. Without exclusivity there is no market price for an invention — and therefore no information about which novelty is worth scarce resources.
  • No incentive to commercialise. Anyone who cannot exclude, and whose reward is capped, has little reason to undertake the arduous, risky work of implementation and scaling.
  • No capital formation. Intangible assets without legal title are “dead capital”: they cannot be pledged, traded or used as a basis for investment.
  • No market entry. Without company formation and competitors, the selective pressure that weeds out poor solutions and spreads good ones is missing.

The inventor’s certificate and the economic patent rewarded the inventor — but they severed the feedback between inventing and exploiting. Innovation became a cost item of the planning bureaucracy rather than a driver of productivity. The cumulative effect over decades is that very productivity gap which the German division made so relentlessly visible.

In fairness: not a plea for IP maximalism

This critique is no licence for a boundless patent system. The West, too, knows the downsides of excessive protection — patent thickets, “trolls,” blocked follow-on innovation, disputes over access to medicines. And Cuban biotechnology shows that targeted state research can produce real, humanitarically valuable results. The point is not “as much protection as possible,” but something more fundamental: an enforceable, tradable property right in intangible values is a necessary condition for turning inventions into lasting prosperity. That condition is exactly what socialist systems structurally failed to meet internally — and they paid for it in innovative capacity and economic performance.

Takeaways for IP practice

  • The right to exclude is not an end in itself but a prosperity mechanism. It makes inventions capable of being booked, financed and traded — the precondition for knowledge becoming value creation.
  • Reward without an incentive to exploit is not enough. The inventor’s certificate and the economic patent honoured the inventor without incentivising commercialisation — the GDR figures (only ~13% exclusive patents, then over 19,000 conversion requests) show where the market value really sat.
  • The German division is the litmus test. One people, two systems, a productivity gap of roughly two-thirds to one-third at unification — driven substantially by the missing regime of incentives and property.
  • Cuba confirms the rule. A monopolist patents by the thousand — but abroad, because value arises only where a property order sustains markets. Without capital formation out of intangibles, even world-class research remains an isolated island.
  • Intangible assets are today the core of corporate value. Whoever fails to secure them legally fails to mobilise them — and forfeits precisely the value creation that carries modern economies.

Socialist patent systems were no accident but the consistent application of an idea: that knowledge should belong to all. Economically, however, the uncomfortable finding holds that it was precisely the communalisation of the right to exclude that weakened the power to turn ideas into prosperity. Property — including, and especially, in intangible goods — is not an obstacle to innovation. It is its precondition.

Photo: © Nicolas Raymond, [CC BY 2.0]

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Who Survives AI? Partners, Associates and Freelance Patent Attorneys in a Shifting Firm Structure

Posted on July 4, 2026 by Dr. Dirk Franke

The debate about Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the patent profession usually focuses on the firm as a whole: falling drafting fees, consolidation pressure, and competition that hands the efficiency gains to clients. In our post “When the Patent Office Becomes More Expensive Than the Attorney” we developed that macro perspective. This piece zooms in — on the people a firm is actually made of. Because AI does not hit the three load-bearing roles of the patent profession evenly. It affects them very differently.

The starting structure: three roles, three risk profiles

Over decades, the patent profession settled into a clear division of labour:

Partners held the client relationships and the authority to decide who worked a case. They billed the work in their own name and carried the firm’s entrepreneurial risk — but they also held the one decisive resource: the relationship with the client.

Associates — employed or associated patent attorneys without equity — received work as it was allocated to them and billed it back to the partners largely without risk. They traded entrepreneurial risk for the security of a steady workload. As a rule, they had no direct client contact.

Freelance patent attorneys were brought in selectively: for workload peaks, for particularly demanding matters, or where they held specialist knowledge that could not be replaced. They bore the full risk of receiving no instructions, but in return they had to maintain no infrastructure. They, too, typically had no direct client contact.

This structure rested on one tacit premise: processing capacity is scarce and expensive. That is precisely the premise AI removes.

The single shift that explains everything

If the same work — claim drafting, the specification, prior-art searching, responding to office actions — can be done roughly five times faster, then the locus of value shifts. It moves away from execution and toward what machines (still) cannot do: client trust, strategic judgment, and personal accountability for the outcome.

From this follows a second, less obvious point — the question of who captures the efficiency gain. In the short term it is the partners: their costs fall while their prices to clients hold at the old level, and the margin widens. In the long term, however, competition passes the saving on to clients, because many attorneys can suddenly do far more work and compete for the same — not equally growing — demand. The transition from “short term” to “long term” is the real fault line, and each of the three groups experiences it differently.

1. Partners: short-term winners, under reform pressure in the long run

In the short term, partners are the clear beneficiaries. They own the one resource AI does not replicate — the client relationship — while their cost base falls: the same volume of work now requires fewer associate hours and less bought-in freelance capacity. As long as fees to clients still track the old levels, the margin expands.

In the long term, the picture reverses. Three forces bear down on partners:

First, price erosion. Competition transfers the efficiency gains to clients; revenue per matter falls. To hold their income, partners need either more matters or higher-value work.

Second, the loss of the infrastructure advantage. The classic lever of large firms was the pyramid: many associates whose hours the partner re-billed at a mark-up. Once AI takes over execution, this leverage shrinks — and with it the structural head-start that size once provided. A lean unit with AI can suddenly deliver quality that used to require a whole team.

Third, the threat of disintermediation. As soon as clients — especially large, patent-savvy corporations — deploy AI tools themselves, partners face a justification test: what exactly is the client still paying for? The answer can no longer be “capacity.”

Strategies for partners:

  • Move up the value chain. Portfolio strategy, freedom-to-operate analyses, licensing, opposition and infringement strategy, and translating imprecise invention disclosures into robust claims all remain judgment work. The partner as a provider of capacity loses; the partner as a strategic adviser and risk-bearer wins.
  • Reshape the pyramid into a diamond. Fewer pure-execution associates, more AI plus experienced judgment. Anyone who preserves the old leverage economics is funding structures the market no longer supports.
  • Productise the offering. Fixed-fee packages, subscription models and technology-enabled services replace the eroding hourly model for text production.
  • Own the AI layer. A firm that builds its own tools, prompts, review routines and quality assurance as a firm asset turns AI into an asset rather than a threat.
  • Open the market downward. Efficiency makes it possible to serve clients who previously failed on cost — SMEs, start-ups, individual inventors. If the price per matter falls, the number of matters can rise (a kind of Jevons effect for the patent profession). Falling total costs of a filing can generate additional demand — though this is capped by the rigid block of official fees, as described in the cost post.

2. Associates: the most exposed group

No role profile maps as precisely onto what AI does best as that of the associate: allocated execution work, billed to the partner. It is exactly this work that is being automated.

In the short term, the group splits in two. Those who master AI and become five times more productive themselves are more valuable than ever. Those who do not become dispensable. Hiring cools, because the leverage economics that once funded associate salaries yield fewer profitable hours.

A problem lurks here that reaches beyond the individual firm: the hollowed-out middle. Junior attorneys traditionally learn judgment on the simple work — the search, the first draft claim set, the routine office-action response. If AI takes over precisely this learning curve, the question becomes where tomorrow’s senior competence is supposed to come from. The profession risks cutting the training pipeline that feeds its future partners.

In the long term, the path to partnership narrows — fewer partners are needed, and the economics that funded that ascent are weaker. For the associate, two very different futures open up: the rise to AI-augmented senior who supervises, reviews and eventually holds relationships — or displacement toward freelancing. The associate who only executes has no future. The associate who builds judgment, client proximity, specialisation and AI mastery does.

Strategies for associates:

  • Become AI-fluent, fast. The decisive question is not whether AI does the work, but whether you are the one who does five times as much with it — or the one it replaces.
  • Break the “no client contact” rule. Building relationship and business-development skills early means acquiring exactly the resource that is scarce and valuable in the new environment.
  • Specialise deeply — in technology fields, procedures (such as opposition and nullity), or industries where judgment and experience command a premium and standardisation reaches its limits.
  • Occupy the “human in the loop” role. Quality assurance, sense-checking and responsibility for machine-generated drafts become a distinct, liability-relevant service in their own right.
  • Build a personal reputation that does not depend on the firm alone — through publications, talks, and visibility.
  • Think entrepreneurially. Because AI lowers the need for infrastructure, a capable associate can today set up a lean practice of their own with far less overhead than only a few years ago.

3. Freelance patent attorneys: structurally the biggest opportunity — and the biggest risk

Freelancers sit at the most interesting break point. Their classic reasons for being engaged — workload peaks and volume — partly dissolve, because partners can now absorb peaks with AI themselves. The “buffer for capacity spikes” is needed less.

In the short term, generalist freelancers therefore lose their overflow work. Specialists with irreplaceable knowledge keep their niche, at least initially.

At the same time, freelancers structurally have the best cost base of all: no infrastructure, no overhead, no administrative apparatus — and, with AI, enormous productivity. In a market of falling prices, the lowest-cost provider has the advantage. What they lack is precisely the most valuable thing: their own client access and a brand, the trust.

In the long term, that very question decides whether freelancers end up among the big winners or the big losers:

As winners, the free, AI-native patent attorney is the leanest conceivable unit — low fixed costs, high throughput, ideally positioned for a price-sensitive segment (start-ups, SMEs, individual inventors). They can significantly undercut established structures on price.

As losers, those who compete only as cheap execution capacity are finished — because there the AI itself is cheaper still. The pure commodity freelancer is ground down between the machine (all but free) and the firm (with its relationships).

Strategies for freelancers:

  • Occupy niches AI does not cover — cutting-edge technology, rare language or jurisdiction combinations, deep sector expertise, forensically demanding disputes.
  • Move from subcontractor to independent practitioner. AI removes the infrastructure barrier that once forced the freelancer into dependence on the firm. Building one’s own client relationships is the decisive step toward the micro-firm.
  • Network. Loose alliances and cooperatives can offer firm-like reliability without carrying the overhead of a classic firm.
  • Shift the offering — away from pure execution and toward AI-assisted senior review and second opinions that firms, too, will buy in.
  • Get ahead of disintermediation by the machine by offering precisely the responsibility, judgment and accountability that an AI cannot assume.

The common movement: all three roles converge on the same scarce competence

What is striking is that AI ultimately pushes all three groups in the same direction. The infrastructure advantage that separated the partner from the freelancer loses its significance. The execution capacity that associates and freelancers contributed becomes a commodity. What remains in the end and makes the difference is the same for all three: client trust, strategic judgment, and personal accountability.

For one constant endures: the patent attorney signs, takes responsibility, and is liable. That accountability cannot be delegated to a machine — it is the profession’s most durable human “moat.” Whoever combines it with genuine judgment and a resilient relationship survives the upheaval. Whoever sells only capacity will not.

Takeaways for IP practice

  • Your role, not your title, determines your exposure. Partners are short-term winners and under long-term reform pressure; associates are the most exposed; freelancers have both the greatest opportunity and the greatest risk.
  • Value migrates from execution to judgment. Each of the three groups should shift its time to where the machine cannot reach: strategy, the client relationship, responsibility.
  • AI competence is not an add-on but the entry ticket. The dividing line will run between those who do five times the work with AI and those it replaces.
  • The training question is strategic. If AI takes over the juniors’ learning curve, competence-building has to be reorganised — otherwise the profession will, a decade from now, lack the next generation of judgment.
  • The market can open downward. Falling costs can unlock new clients; the limiting factor remains the rigid block of official fees.

AI changes not only how much work is done in the patent profession, but who is paid for it and for what. The firm structure of partners, associates and freelancers was an answer to the scarcity of processing capacity. Once that scarcity is gone, the structure reorders itself — along the only resource that stays scarce: human trust and judgment.

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When the Patent Office Costs More Than the Attorney: Two Scenarios for the Future of the IP Industry in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Posted on July 2, 2026 by Dr. Dirk Franke

The Quiet Reversal of the Cost Structure

For decades, an unspoken rule of thumb governed the patent world: the office is cheap, the attorney is expensive. Anyone looking to reduce the cost of a patent filing turned the attorney screw — shorter specifications, leaner searches, more input from the inventor.

At the European Patent Office (EPO), that rule of thumb has long since ceased to apply. Official fees have overtaken attorney drafting fees. A European proceeding now costs more in pure official fees than the drafting of the application itself — and the gap is widening.

It is precisely this reversal that sets up the question set to reshape the IP industry in the coming years: What happens when Artificial Intelligence drastically reduces one side of the cost equation — and not the other?

The Cost Comparison in Numbers

Consider a typical constellation: entry into the European phase (or a direct filing) with 20 patent claims, pursued through the 5th renewal year. The figures are based on the EPO schedule of fees as in force from 1 April 2026.

EPO Official Fees

ItemAmount
Filing fee (online)€135
European search fee€1,595
Designation fee€720
Examination fee€2,010
Claims fees (claims 16–20: 5 × €290)€1,450
Subtotal — entry/examination≈ €5,910
3rd year renewal fee≈ €690
4th year renewal fee≈ €845
5th year renewal fee≈ €1,000
Subtotal — renewal fees (years 3–5)≈ €2,535
Total EPO official fees≈ €8,445

Note: Renewal fees at the application stage follow the applicable schedule of fees; the 3rd and 4th year renewals were raised above average with effect from 1 April 2026. The figures above are rounded to this order of magnitude.

Attorney Drafting

ItemAmount
Drafting and filing of the application€3,000 – €5,000

The result is striking and, for many clients, counterintuitive: even today — without any AI — the pure EPO official fees in this model case, at roughly €8,400, sit well above the attorney drafting fee of €3,000 to €5,000. The office has become the larger cost block, not the attorney.

This figure is the lever on which everything that follows turns. Because AI initially acts on only one of the two sides — the attorney’s.

Scenario 1: The Attorney Becomes Cheap, the Office Stays Rigid

AI-supported tools for claim drafting, specification generation, and prior-art search substantially reduce the attorney workload per application. The drafting fee — already the smaller item — falls further, to a fraction of its former level.

On the office side, in this scenario, nothing happens.

That is not an unrealistic assumption; it follows institutional logic. The EPO is a monopolist without competitive pressure. It pursues its own objectives, which are not aligned with the cost interests of applicants — among them safeguarding the employment and continued standing of a large examiner workforce. An authority with this incentive structure does not necessarily pass on AI-driven efficiency gains in the form of lower fees; it may just as readily channel them into institutional preservation, reserves, or political latitude. The most recent fee round — an increase in most core fees from 1 April 2026, with above-average rises in the early renewal fees — points to a rigid, upward-tending fee regime rather than to any pass-through of efficiency gains.

The consequences for firms:

If value creation per mandate shrinks on the attorney side, but overall demand for IP rights does not grow to the same degree, a displacement dynamic sets in. The same work is done by fewer people in less time. The number of mandates a single attorney can handle rises — the total number of mandates awarded does not.

The result is a market in which more and more attorneys compete for fewer and fewer economically viable mandates. The price of legal work falls, margins erode, and the efficiency gains from AI accrue not to the profession but are passed through to clients under competitive pressure. The office’s rigid cost block, meanwhile, prevents falling attorney costs from pushing the total cost of a filing low enough to noticeably stimulate demand. The office remains the bottleneck — and firms bear the adjustment burden alone.

In this scenario, AI is not a growth driver for firms but an accelerant of consolidation.

Scenario 2: Both Sides Give Way — The Filing-and-Grant Machine

The second scenario rests on a bolder assumption: the office, too, opens up to AI and passes on the efficiency gains. This becomes possible because here AI is not merely cheaper, but simultaneously better.

The decisive technical point is search. A near-perfect, machine-driven search for novelty-destroying prior art — across all languages, databases, and document classes — reduces the cost of the most labour-intensive part of examination while at the same time raising its quality. For the first time, cost reduction and quality improvement coincide rather than pulling against each other.

If both cost sides — attorney and office — fall at once, the entire economic calculus of the patent system tips over. Protecting even the smallest improvements becomes financeable. The number of new filings can rise dramatically.

At the end of this trajectory stands an industry that transforms into a filing-and-grant machine: applications are generated by machine, searched by machine, examined by machine, and granted by machine — a procedure that, in routine operation, no longer requires any human interaction. The inventor supplies the core technical information; everything downstream runs automatically.

Litigation, too, becomes a machine matter.

Automation does not stop at grant. In opposition and revocation proceedings, the intensive search for novelty-destroying prior art is the core of every dispute — and this is exactly where AI is strongest. What today ties up weeks of attorney and office work becomes a fast, exhaustive machine search.

A two-tier model becomes conceivable:

  • First instance by AI: The decision on whether a patent is maintained is taken, at first instance, by an AI system — fast, cheap, and based on an exhaustive search.
  • Second instance by humans: Review remains reserved to human examiners — but at significantly higher cost. The human eye shifts from being the standard to being an expensive remedy.

This structure would have far-reaching consequences for access to justice. The cheap, automated first instance lowers the threshold for challenges to IP rights; the expensive human second instance becomes a filter affordable only to those with enough at stake. Whoever wants human review pays for it — a pay-for-human model at the heart of the sovereign procedure.

The Real Fork in the Road

Both scenarios share the same starting diagnosis — the reversal of the cost structure in the office’s favour — and diverge on a single question: Does the EPO give way, or not?

  • If the office stays rigid (Scenario 1), the full force of AI concentrates on the attorney side. Firms consolidate, competition intensifies, and clients benefit only to a limited degree, because the official cost block caps the total saving.
  • If the office gives way (Scenario 2), a largely dehumanised filing-and-grant apparatus emerges, with sharply rising filing numbers — bringing with it all the follow-on problems of quality assurance, a flood of prior art, and the delicate transition to machine-made legal decisions.

Institutional economics argues, in the short term, for Scenario 1. A monopolist without competitive pressure and with its own preservation interests has little incentive to translate efficiency gains into fee reductions. Technical development — particularly the quality of machine search — drives, by contrast, towards Scenario 2.

The likely path lies somewhere in between: the attorney side automates and consolidates first (Scenario 1 is already underway), while the office side follows more slowly, under political pressure, and in stages. The transition to a fully automated procedure would then be no single leap, but a years-long contest over the question of where in the procedure the human remains indispensable — and who pays for them.

What This Means for Applicants and Firms Today

For clients, the decisive cost question shifts. No longer “Which attorney is cheap?”, but “How do I manage the official cost block?” becomes the central strategic task — through the number of claims, the timing of payments, geographic reach, and the question of which rights are even worth maintaining.

For firms, the answer lies not in clinging to the hourly model for text production, which AI is eroding in any case, but in shifting towards what machines cannot (yet) deliver: strategic counsel, the translation of imprecise invention disclosures into robust claims, responsibility and liability for content — and the human second instance that, in Scenario 2, becomes the most valuable asset of all.

The reversal of the cost structure is already reality. Which of the two scenarios follows from it will be decided not in the firms — but on the question of how a monopolistic office deals with the very technology that calls its own cost base into question.

This article is provided for information and discussion and does not constitute legal advice. The fees stated refer to the EPO schedule of fees as adjusted with effect from 1 April 2026.

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Can a Research Hub Be Rescued on Credit? Debt, Taxes and Red Tape from a Startup Perspective

Posted on July 2, 2026 by Dr. Dirk Franke

A follow-up to “Is Germany Falling Behind? What 125 Years of Nobel Prizes Reveal About Its Research Landscape“

The previous article closed with a finding that can be summed up in a single sentence: Germany is not losing ground because it does too little research, but because others scale faster, bigger and more deliberately — and because the path from an idea to a granted IP right is too long here. That leads almost inevitably to the economic-policy question now under intense debate: can the gap be closed with money? Specifically — can Germany strengthen its position as a research hub by taking on new debt and investing massively in research and development? And how does that relate to the parallel debates over higher taxes and levies, over bureaucracy, and over the conditions for new company formation?

For a startup, this is no academic question. Where research is done and financed, the inventions arise that become tomorrow’s patents and marketable products. We work through the debate along four questions and close with a conclusion for IP practice.

1. The fiscal headroom: how much “reserve” is there in the first place?

First, the good news for anyone counting on debt-financed investment. Measured by the internationally comparable Maastricht definition, Germany’s debt-to-GDP ratio stood at 63.5 percent in 2025 — around €2.84 trillion. That is comfortable in the EU context: the EU average rose to 81.7 percent in 2025, France stood at 115.6 percent, Italy at 137.1 percent and Greece at 146.1 percent. Only a handful of states, such as Estonia (24.1 percent), are better positioned than Germany. Germany’s top rating and low refinancing costs confirm this headroom — while France, for instance, was downgraded in September 2025 and pays markedly higher interest.

That reserve is, however, being deployed at high speed. With the constitutional amendment of March 2025, Germany’s Schuldenbremse (constitutional debt brake) was opened up in two areas: defence spending above a threshold was largely exempted from the borrowing limit, and a credit-financed “infrastructure special fund” (Sondervermögen) of €500 billion in total was created (€300 billion for the federal government, €100 billion for the states and municipalities, €100 billion for the Climate and Transformation Fund). It is important not to misread the label: these special funds are genuine debt and are counted in the official ratio — they are “assets” in name only. Projections see the debt ratio climbing to somewhere between 70 and over 100 percent in the coming years, depending on growth and inflation.

Two things follow for the research hub. First, fiscal room for additional investment does exist and is tolerated by the capital markets. Second, it is finite, already largely earmarked for defence and infrastructure, and the real long-term liabilities — pensions and civil-servant retirement obligations — loom as implicit commitments that are not even captured in the official ratio. Anyone wishing to fund the research hub with new borrowing is therefore competing with other claims for a limited and shrinking buffer.

2. Money is rarely the real bottleneck

The central insight of the Nobel Prize article was that Germany does not fail on research intensity. The latest figures bear this out: in 2024, spending on research and development rose to €137.1 billion, a share of 3.17 percent of GDP and thus the highest reading since the series began in 1995. Among the large EU economies Germany is out in front, comfortably clearing the European three-percent target.

The national target of 3.5 percent was missed by 2025 and pushed back to 2030 by the federal and state governments in December 2025 — but the decisive point lies elsewhere: roughly two thirds of R&D spending (about €92.5 billion in 2024) is borne by the private sector, not the state. The 3.5-percent target is simply unreachable without private investment. Additional public debt can therefore make a contribution — for computing infrastructure, non-university top-tier research, or equity capital — but it does not replace corporate innovation budgets, and it does not address the structural weaknesses: bureaucracy, the translation gap, skilled labour, economies of scale.

The direction of travel is the real warning sign. While real R&D spending in the United States grew in 2024, in Germany it slipped slightly. A public investment programme can cushion this trend — but only if it actually flows into productive, location-strengthening uses rather than into consumptive spending that burdens debt sustainability without raising innovative capacity. Debt is a lever, not an end in itself; its effect on the research hub depends entirely on what it is spent on.

3. Taxes and levies: the underrated location factor

If money is not the bottleneck, the framework conditions move to the fore — and here Germany fares poorly by international comparison. The tax-and-contribution ratio (taxes and social contributions relative to GDP) hit a historic high of around 42 percent in 2025. On corporate taxation, the headline combined burden on corporations exceeds 30 percent, against an OECD average of about 24 percent and an EU average of roughly 21 percent; the effective rate is just under 27 percent. In the Tax Foundation’s 2025 International Tax Competitiveness Index, Germany ranks 20th of 38 OECD countries and has the fourth-highest corporate tax rate. The burden on labour is high too: the top rate of income tax reaches 47.5 percent including the solidarity surcharge, and the tax wedge on labour is the second-highest in the OECD after Belgium.

For research-intensive startups this matters twice over. On the one hand, high non-wage labour costs make precisely those highly qualified positions expensive that form the core of a deep-tech or biotech team. On the other, the taxation of equity stakes and exits helps determine whether internationally mobile founders and investors choose the location at all.

Policymakers have recognised the need to act. For the years 2025 to 2027, an “investment booster” was adopted, offering 30 percent declining-balance depreciation on equipment investments; from 2028, the Körperschaftsteuer (corporate income tax) is to fall in five annual steps from 15 to 10 percent. Whether these reliefs are sufficient and arrive in time is an open question — but the direction is right. In fairness, it should be noted that the high tax-and-contribution ratio also finances a capable system of public goods, and that the effective burden on investment sits below the headline rate thanks to generous depreciation rules. For the location decision of a mobile founder, however, what counts is the overall signal — and at present that signal is unfavourable.

4. Do debates about higher taxes harm the research hub?

This is precisely where the political controversy sits. Alongside the relief plans, there are proposals for higher burdens — for instance to tighten the Erbschaftsteuer (inheritance and gift tax) or to reintroduce a wealth tax. Proponents argue on grounds of distributional fairness and of the state’s financing needs in an ageing society. The other side — including business associations and family-owned firms — warns that tightening inheritance tax would considerably complicate succession in mid-sized companies and thereby endanger long-established structures.

For the research hub and for startups, the effect of such debates is ambivalent, and it deserves a sober look. What matters economically is less the individual measure than the expectations effect: location decisions, company formations and growth financing are long-term and react sensitively to uncertainty about the future tax burden. When higher taxation of capital, wealth or exits is discussed without a clear framework in sight, the uncertainty alone can make investors more cautious and deter internationally mobile founders — precisely in an environment where competition for talent and venture capital is fierce and where Germany already lags on the availability of capital (see Section 6).

At the same time, it would be simplistic to dismiss every tax increase as damaging to the location per se. What is decisive is the concrete design: a measure that burdens broad incomes and dampens work incentives operates differently from a targeted rule with reliable exemptions for entrepreneurial capital. From the specific vantage point of innovative startups, though, the finding can be stated clearly: what these companies need most is predictability and a competitive treatment of equity participation and exits. Debates that undermine that predictability are riskier for the research and founding hub than their fiscal revenue would justify — regardless of how one assesses them on distributional grounds.

5. Bureaucracy and barriers to founding

The Nobel Prize article named bureaucracy and slow procedures as a structural weakness of the location. For new companies this is felt directly: drawn-out formation and permitting processes, burdensome reporting and documentation duties, a tax code whose complexity overwhelms small teams, and cumbersome immigration procedures for international skilled workers. Every hour a founding team spends on administration rather than product development lengthens the path to its first protectable invention.

Especially critical is the much-cited translation gap — the transition from basic research to a marketable, patentable application. It is not merely a matter of money but also of process: university spin-offs frequently founder on unclear rules governing intellectual property, on slow equity decisions by the institutions, and on missing structures for technology transfer. Cutting red tape is therefore no sideshow but one of the most effective and, at the same time, most budget-friendly levers — unlike additional debt, it costs the state nothing and improves conditions immediately.

6. What startups need from the state

Distilling the perspective of innovative startups yields a list of priorities that only partly concerns money:

Venture capital in the growth phase. Germany’s financing gap is structural: measured against GDP, Germany has recently invested a fraction of what flows into US startups, and the market has historically been bank-financed rather than equity-oriented. The WIN initiative (Growth and Innovation Capital for Germany), launched in 2024, aims to mobilise €12 billion by 2030 initially — and, under the 2025 coalition’s plans, more than €25 billion; by the end of 2025, around €2.64 billion had been committed. Flanking this, a reform of the investment ordinance (Anlageverordnung) in early 2025 widened the scope for insurers and pension funds to hold risk capital. Here the state is on the right track but must deliver — early voices are already warning that the initiative is running out of steam.

Non-dilutive innovation funding. The Forschungszulage (Germany’s statutory research and development tax allowance) is perhaps the most underrated lever. Since its introduction in 2020, and following expansions through the Growth Opportunities Act (Wachstumschancengesetz, 2024) and the tax investment programme (2025), it supports research-active companies with — for SMEs — 35 percent on an assessment base of up to €12 million per year, i.e. a maximum of roughly €4.2 million. It is a legal entitlement rather than a competitive procedure, is paid out in cash where there is no tax liability, and does not dilute equity. For young, still loss-making companies, that is cash on the cost side — and the underlying project scoping simultaneously creates substance in investor due diligence.

Predictable, competitive taxation — in particular of employee equity participation and exits (see Section 4).

Lean procedures and a genuine welcome culture for international top talent, faster spin-offs, functioning technology transfer, and the closing of the translation gap (see Section 5).

The ordering is telling: of these four points, only the first is primarily a question of money — and even there it is less about state debt than about mobilising private capital. The other three are matters of reform, not of spending.

7. Conclusion for IP practice

The answer to the opening question is therefore this: more debt and more R&D spending can support the research hub, but they are neither sufficient nor the most effective lever. In Germany, money is rarely the bottleneck; speed, the tax burden, the availability of capital in the growth phase, and the procedures at the interface between research and commercialisation are. A debt-financed investment programme delivers only when accompanied by structural reform — otherwise it consumes a limited fiscal buffer without raising innovative capacity.

For clients and IP strategists, this yields concrete points of connection:

  • The research allowance belongs in every financing architecture. Any company conducting R&D should assess and document eligibility early — the clean project and invention scoping this requires is in any case the foundation of a robust patent strategy.
  • IP rights are a financing argument. In a capital-scarce environment, a well-conceived IP portfolio is a central value driver in due diligence and a signal to investors — precisely where venture capital is tight.
  • The translation gap is also an IP gap. Whether excellent basic research becomes protectable, marketable inventions is decided at exactly the interface between science, commercialisation and industrial property protection — the interface at which early, strategic IP advice takes hold.

Germany has the research base, the capital potential and — contrary to what is often claimed — fiscal headroom too. Whether the next generation of breakthroughs carries a German label depends less on how much additional money flows into the location than on how quickly the framework conditions are reformed — and on how swiftly an idea becomes a granted right.

Data sources: Deutsche Bundesbank (public debt 2025); Federal Statistical Office / Eurostat (debt and deficit in EU comparison 2025; R&D spending 2024); Federal Ministry of Finance (debt brake, international tax comparison, WIN initiative); GWK (the 3.5% R&D target); German Economic Institute (IW) / INSM (corporate taxation 2025/26); ZEW (effective corporate tax burden); Tax Foundation / Statista (International Tax Competitiveness Index 2025; corporate tax reform); KfW (WIN annual report 2025); Federal Ministry of Education and Research / BSFZ (research allowance); Stiftung Marktwirtschaft (implicit public debt, generational accounting 2025). As of: July 2026.

Photo: © Tim Reckmann, [CC BY 2.0]

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Is Germany Falling Behind? What 125 Years of Nobel Prizes Reveal About Its Standing as a Research Location

Posted on June 30, 2026 by Dr. Dirk Franke

In this article we analyse the Nobel Prizes awarded in Physics and Chemistry between 1901 and 2025 for Germany, the United Kingdom, France and the USA, and place the development in the broader context of research spending, patent activity and locational policy. From the perspective of a start-up company, the question is not academic: where scientific breakthroughs occur, tomorrow’s intellectual property rights — and the economic value created from them — arise.

1. Historical development, 1901 to 2025

The chart below shows the cumulative number of Nobel laureates in Physics and Chemistry, assigned to the country of the laureate’s academic affiliation at the time of the award. Three phases can be distinguished.

Figure 1: Cumulative Nobel laureates in Physics and Chemistry, 1901–2025 (affiliation basis). Source: nobelprize.org, own calculation.

First phase (1901 to about 1930): During the first three decades, Germany was the undisputed centre of the natural sciences. By around 1930, Germany had already accumulated some two dozen laureates, while the USA stood at a handful. The United Kingdom followed as a steady number two; France began strongly with the Curies and Becquerel, but then remained at a low level for a long time.

Second phase (1933 to 1945): With the expulsion and emigration of numerous scientists from 1933 onwards, the German curve flattens noticeably. Researchers such as Hans Bethe, Maria Goeppert-Mayer and Otto Stern won their awards only later — and already as scientists in the USA. The loss of personnel in those years still has an effect today.

Third phase (from about 1960): Around 1961 the USA overtakes Germany and then rises almost unchecked. As of the 2025 cut-off date, the final standing is as follows:

CountryPhysicsChemistryTotal
USA11085195
United Kingdom263056
Germany223355
France15924

It is notable that Germany has maintained its tradition better in Chemistry (33 laureates) than in Physics (22), where the gap to the USA is particularly wide. Overall, with almost 200 laureates, the USA stands around three and a half times as high as Germany.

Methodological note: The assignment follows the affiliation as stated by the Nobel Foundation, i.e. the country in which the laureate was working at the time of the award. A count by country of birth would be higher for Germany and lower for the USA — precisely because of the wave of emigration. The 2026 prizes will not be announced until October 2026; the data reflect awards through 2025. Source: Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences / nobelprize.org.

2. The record of the last 20 years

Because Nobel Prizes honour work that often dates back decades, it is worth looking at the most recent window. In the years 2006 to 2025 too, the gap has not narrowed but solidified:

CountryPhysicsChemistryTotal 2006–2025
USA253156
United Kingdom5510
Germany448
France415

In this period, the USA produced about seven times as many laureates as Germany. There were certainly German successes — Gerhard Ertl (Chemistry 2007), Stefan Hell (2014), Benjamin List (2021), Reinhard Genzel and Klaus Hasselmann (Physics 2020/2021) and Ferenc Krausz (2023) — but they remained isolated cases in a field dominated by US institutions. Tellingly, several of these prizes went to Max Planck Institutes: Germany’s leading research is concentrated in a few non-university flagships.

3. Research spending: USA and Germany compared

In absolute terms: a factor of around six

The most obvious explanation is research spending. According to estimates by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO, purchasing-power-adjusted, base year 2015), in 2024 the USA invested around USD 782 billion in research and development — Germany around USD 132 billion. The OECD even puts US spending at the one-trillion-dollar mark in 2024 prices; only China is now on a par. In absolute terms, the USA therefore spends about six times as much on research and development as Germany.

Relative to population: ahead per capita as well

This factor of six could be explained in part by size: with around 340 million inhabitants, the USA has roughly four times as many people as Germany (about 84 million). The spending lead (≈ 6:1), however, exceeds the population lead (≈ 4:1). This means that the USA invests more even per capita. US per-capita spending in 2023 was around USD 2,850 (purchasing-power-adjusted); for Germany the figure works out at roughly USD 2,000 — so the USA is about a third higher per head.

Measured against economic output, Germany is almost level

If research intensity is measured as a share of gross domestic product, the gap shrinks considerably: in 2023/24 the USA reached around 3.45 per cent, Germany 3.11 to 3.14 per cent. Germany thus still belongs to the world’s leading group and ranks ahead among the large EU economies. The problem therefore lies less in the ratio than in the absolute scale and in structural factors — and increasingly in the direction of travel: in 2024, real research spending grew by 3.4 per cent in the USA, while it fell by 0.4 per cent in Germany. The gap is thus widening further.

4. The patent picture

For an IP location, patent statistics are informative, as they capture applied innovative strength more directly than the Nobel Prize. Here a more nuanced picture emerges.

In international PCT applications, Germany ranked fifth worldwide in 2024 with 16,721 filings — behind China (70,160), the USA (54,087), Japan (48,397) and South Korea (23,851; WIPO PCT Yearly Review 2025). In absolute terms, the USA files a good three times as many international patents as Germany. Per capita, however, the picture reverses: per million inhabitants, Germany reaches around 200 PCT applications, the USA only about 158. In applied, SME-driven engineering innovation — mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, drive technology, energy — Germany remains a patent powerhouse.

In research-intensive future fields, however, the warning signs are mounting:

  • Pharmaceuticals: In 2000, more than 1,400 applications (around 17 per cent of the global sector) still came from Germany; by 2021 this figure had fallen to around 849 (German Economic Institute, IW).
  • Clinical trials: In the number of clinical trials run by pharmaceutical companies, Germany slipped from second place (2016) to fourth — behind the USA, China and Spain.
  • Translation gap: The path from basic research to marketable, protectable products is regarded as a chronic weakness of the location.

Germany thus defends its position where it has traditionally been strong, but is losing ground in precisely those fields where the scientific and economic returns of the future arise — and where the next Nobel Prizes will be awarded.

5. Structural causes

Why, despite a high research ratio, does Germany fail to close the gap with the world’s leaders? The Commission of Experts for Research and Innovation (EFI), together with position papers by the Stifterverband, the Leopoldina and the Volkswagen Foundation, identify a structural rather than a cyclical problem:

  • Bureaucracy and administrative burden. Cumbersome, slow approval and immigration procedures deter international top talent.
  • Talent balance at the top end. Germany has recently recorded a net inflow of researchers; the scientists who leave, however, are on average more prolific in publications than those newly arriving.
  • Demographics. Like the economy as a whole, the science system is affected by ageing-related personnel shortages and is increasingly dependent on immigration.
  • Economies of scale and magnetism. Leading US universities and companies concentrate money, talent and venture capital at a self-reinforcing density: excellence attracts excellence.
  • Infrastructure for future technologies. According to the European Commission, the entire EU has less than 5 per cent of the world’s AI computing capacity — the USA around 75 per cent, China 15 per cent (German Bundestag, printed paper 21/3357, 2025).

6. Outlook: trend and forecast

Risk scenario

If the current path continues, the gap to the USA is likely to widen further. The indicators: falling real research spending in 2024, a clear lag in AI computing capacity, the retreat from pharmaceutical frontier research and a demographically driven worsening of the skills shortage. With the Nobel Prize, which rewards breakthroughs with decades of lead time, this weakness will only fully show in the 2040s — but the seeds are being sown today. The most likely forecast: Germany continues to fall behind at the scientific frontier.

Opportunity scenario

At the same time, US research budgets are coming under pressure under the second Trump administration. German voices see this as an opportunity to attract top researchers to Europe. There are also real strengths that often get lost in the crisis rhetoric: in the Nature Index 2025, Germany ranks third worldwide behind China and the USA, and first in Europe; the research landscape (Max Planck, Fraunhofer, Helmholtz, Leibniz) is highly differentiated, and research intensity, at over 3 per cent of GDP, is in the upper field of industrialised nations. Whether Germany seizes this opportunity depends less on money than on the speed of reform: leaner bureaucracy, a genuine culture of welcome with financial incentives for top talent, investment in computing infrastructure, more venture capital and the closing of the translation gap.

7. Conclusion for IP practice

The 125-year Nobel record is a lagging indicator of the shift in scientific gravity. Germany has lost its former leading role to the USA and has been unable to narrow the gap over the past two decades either — if anything, the gap is still widening. For clients and IP strategists, this means:

  • Frontier research is shifting. Anyone seeking to build IP rights in key technologies (AI, biotechnology, quantum, semiconductors) must keep an eye on the US and Chinese markets and their filing dynamics.
  • Germany’s strength remains applied innovation. In SME-driven engineering innovation, Germany’s per-capita patent density is world-leading — and for many clients that is where the greatest value lies.
  • Locational competition is becoming tougher. Structural weaknesses — bureaucracy, the translation gap, infrastructure — determine whether excellent basic research becomes protectable, marketable inventions.

Germany is not falling behind because it does too little research, but because others scale faster, larger and more purposefully — and because the path from idea to IP right is too long here. It is precisely at this interface between research and industrial property rights that it will be decided whether the next generation of breakthroughs bears a German return address.

Data sources: Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences / nobelprize.org; OECD Main Science and Technology Indicators (2026); WIPO Global Innovation Index (2025) and PCT Yearly Review (2025); Eurostat (2024); SSTI (2025); Commission of Experts for Research and Innovation; Stifterverband / Leopoldina / Volkswagen Foundation (2025); German Bundestag, printed paper 21/3357 (2025); Nature Index (2025). Own calculations for the cumulative Nobel count (affiliation basis).

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Changing the Name of an IP Rights Holder or Applicant

Posted on June 29, 2026 by Dr. Dirk Franke
European Patent Office

Company names change, individuals marry, corporate structures are reorganised. Whenever the holder or applicant of an IP right is affected, the relevant register should be updated promptly. This article summarises what to bear in mind when recording a name change before the EUIPO, the European Patent Office (EPO) and the German Patent and Trade Mark Office (DPMA).

1. The decisive preliminary question: name change or transfer of rights?

Every request begins with the correct legal characterisation of the event. It governs the procedure, the evidence required and the costs:

  • Pure name change: The identity of the legal entity is preserved – only its designation changes. Typical cases are the renaming of a company, the change of name of a natural person (for instance through marriage) or, depending on the applicable national law, a mere change of legal form without loss of identity.
  • Transfer of rights (recordal of a change of ownership): The holder changes; the right passes to a different legal entity. This includes sales, asset deals and, as a rule, mergers in which the transferring entity loses its identity.

Whether an event qualifies as a name change or as a transfer of rights depends on the applicable national law – the decisive factor is whether the identity of the legal entity continues to exist. A wrong characterisation regularly leads to objections and delays. In case of doubt, careful review against the register documents (e.g. the commercial register) is advisable, because transfers are subject to different and usually stricter requirements.

This article focuses on the pure name change; the differing requirements for a transfer of rights are mentioned in each case for the purpose of distinction.

2. EUIPO – EU trade marks and EU designs

Formal requirements. As long as the identity of the holder or applicant remains unaffected, the name and address can be changed freely. The easiest way is to make the change online via the User Area of one’s account or via the corresponding online form for other recordals. The request must be filed in one of the EUIPO’s five languages; where the official form is used, completing the text fields in one of those languages is sufficient.

Evidence. For a pure name or address change, the EUIPO generally does not require any supporting documents. Notifying the new name is usually enough. Only in cases of doubt (for instance as to legal form) may the Office request evidence.

A practical advantage – the ID number. If the holder states the identification number assigned by the EUIPO, the change is carried out automatically for all IP rights held under that ID. A list of all affected trade marks and designs is then not required.

Official fees. A pure name and address change is free of charge. By contrast, a full transfer of rights is the exception for which a fee is charged (whereas a partial transfer is free of charge).

Distinction from a transfer. If the identity of the legal entity changes – for example in a merger – the appropriate request is not for a name change but for the recordal of a transfer.

3. EPO – European patent applications and patents

Entries in the European Patent Register are governed generally by Rule 143 EPC. As regards names, three scenarios must be distinguished:

a) Pure name change (identity preserved). This is recorded in the register upon request. The EPO requires suitable evidence for this purpose, for example an extract from the commercial register; where appropriate, it will request a translation into one of its official languages (cf. Guidelines for Examination, Part E, Chapter XII). No official fee is payable for a pure name change.

b) Correction of an incorrect applicant name. Where the incorrect designation is based on an error (e.g. a typing error or the inadvertent naming of a subsidiary), a correction under Rule 139 EPC may be available. It takes effect retroactively but is subject to a higher evidentiary burden and must be requested without undue delay after the error is discovered.

c) Transfer of rights. A genuine change of ownership is recorded under Rule 22 EPC. Evidence in the form of an assignment satisfying the requirements of Article 72 EPC (written form, signatures of both parties) is required. The transfer takes effect vis-à-vis the EPO only once the documents have been produced.

Form of filing. Requests may be filed in writing via MyEPO or using EPO Form 5050 and must be signed by an entitled person.

Official fees – a current point to note. For a transfer under Rule 22 EPC an administrative fee (most recently EUR 120) was previously payable. Since 1 April 2024, however, this fee has been waived for recordal requests filed via the MyEPO system. A pure name change was, and remains, free of charge.

Competence after grant. For granted European patents, the EPO is competent to make entries only during the nine-month opposition period or while opposition proceedings are pending (Rule 85 in conjunction with Rule 22 EPC). Thereafter, changes must be requested in the national registers of the validated states. For a European patent with unitary effect (Unitary Patent), the entry is made in the Register for Unitary Patent Protection, to which Rule 22 EPC applies mutatis mutandis.

Strategic note. A recordal made before grant takes effect centrally for all designated states. If it is made only afterwards, the national registers must be updated individually – with corresponding additional effort and cost. It is therefore sensible to deal with pending changes at the latest in connection with the communication under Rule 71(3) EPC.

4. DPMA – German trade marks, patents, utility models and designs

Formal requirements. The DPMA provides forms for recording a name or address change – in the trade mark area, for example, form W 7614 (change of name, company name, legal form or address; W 7616 for a transfer of rights); for the other IP rights, the recordal form A 9139 together with the associated forms. An informal request is also possible.

Requests are legally effective only if filed by post, fax, via DPMAdirektWeb or – where a qualified electronic signature is available – via DPMAdirektPro. A mere e-mail is not legally effective and is not forwarded to the file by the Office.

Evidence. For a pure name and address change, the DPMA normally requires no evidence; notifying the new name is sufficient. Where there are justified doubts (for instance, details deviating from the register), the Office may request further evidence.

Official fees. The recordal procedure before the DPMA – and thus the pure name and address change – is free of charge. (Fee figures circulating online for a “change of the holder’s name” do not relate to the cost-free register correction and should be treated with caution.)

Distinction from a transfer. In the case of a change of ownership, the request may be filed by the registered holder or by the legal successor. If it is filed by the legal successor alone, the registered holder is heard and asked to consent before the recordal is made (right to be heard, Section 28(4) DPMAV) – which noticeably delays the procedure.

Interface with the EPO. For European patents having effect in Germany, a change made before the EPO is transferred automatically to the DPMA only if it was made before grant. Otherwise the change must additionally be requested before the DPMA – on production of the EPO’s confirmation of the change (Form 2544).

5. Timing of the register correction

The offices do not publish binding, officially guaranteed processing times; the following figures are based on practice and may vary depending on workload:

  • EUIPO: Name and address changes requested online are processed quickly, often within a few days to a few weeks.
  • EPO: In practice it takes roughly two to four weeks until receipt is confirmed or any communication noting a deficiency is issued. A communication generally has to be answered within two months (extendable once by two months).
  • DPMA: Pure name and address changes are usually carried out within a few weeks. Where a transfer involves hearing the registered holder, the procedure takes correspondingly longer.

6. At a glance

CriterionEUIPOEPODPMA
Legal basis for name changeEUTMR/EUTMIR (identity unchanged)Rule 143 EPC; correction: Rule 139 EPCRecordal Guidelines, Sec. 28 DPMAV
Fee for pure name changefreefreefree
Evidence for name changegenerally noneevidence required (e.g. register extract)generally none
FilingUser Area / online formMyEPO / Form 5050DPMAdirekt, post, fax (not e-mail)
Fee for transfer of rightschargeable (exception)EUR 0 via MyEPO (since 1 Apr 2024; otherwise EUR 120)free
Typical durationa few days to weeksapprox. 2–4 weeksa few weeks

7. Practical points to bear in mind

  1. Characterise first. Before filing, clarify whether the event is a pure name change or a transfer of rights. Mischaracterisation is the most frequent cause of objections.
  2. An up-to-date register protects your rights. Only the registered holder can reliably enforce rights from the IP right. Outdated register data can impair standing to sue, the claiming of priority and – through the chain of title – later transfers.
  3. Keep deadlines safe. Official communications go to the registered holder or representative. Outdated address data carries the risk of missed deadlines.
  4. Bundle the portfolio. In the case of renamings or transactions, all affected IP rights should be changed together. At the EUIPO, stating the ID number makes portfolio-wide implementation easier.
  5. Update the European patent before grant where possible. This way the recordal takes effect centrally; after grant the national registers must be maintained individually.
  6. Secure evidence early. In transfers in particular, supporting documents become harder to obtain over time – for instance where the entities involved have been dissolved or restructured.
  7. Language and translations. EUIPO: five official languages; EPO: German, English, French. Foreign-language evidence may need to be translated.
  8. Misleading payment requests. All three offices warn against official-looking invoices from private providers. Official fees are payable only to the office concerned.

Photo: © Björn Láczay, [CC BY 2.0]

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When Youth Protection Meets Artistic Freedom — and Where IP Law Comes In

Posted on June 26, 2026 by Franke IP Insights

I. What Happened

Filmkamera

Uwe Boll’s action thriller “Citizen Vigilante“ (starring Armie Hammer) tells the story of a wealthy businessman who, after a violent crime against his mother, loses faith in the rule of law and turns to vigilante justice. Boll presents the film as the closing chapter of a trilogy (“Deutschland im Winter”), after Hanau (rated FSK 16) and Run.

The film was released in the United States on June, 19 2026 and cleared classification abroad without restriction. In Germany, the Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle der Filmwirtschaft (FSK) twice declined to classify it at all, assigning the designation “KK” — keine Kennzeichnung (no rating).

Under the administrative arrangement between Germany’s federal states, FSK review votes are adopted by the supreme state youth-protection authorities as their own decisions, giving an FSK classification the legal effect of an administrative act. A “no rating” result therefore does far more than restrict minors’ access: cinemas, streaming platforms, broadcasters and electronics retailers may not lawfully offer the film to anyone in Germany — including the more than 50 million adults Boll referenced in his open letter, in which he called the outcome “a politically motivated decision by the FSK.” The film was subsequently released in full on Elon Musk’s platform X, bypassing the German market block entirely.

II. The Constitutional Core: Art. 5(3) GG and Its Limits

Article 5(3) sentence 1 of the German Basic Law guarantees freedom of art without an express statutory reservation (vorbehaltlos gewährleistet). Limits can therefore be drawn only from competing constitutional values — above all the state’s mandate to protect children and young people (Art. 6(2) GG, JuSchG) — and only through a careful balancing exercise (praktische Konkordanz) that respects proportionality.

That is precisely where this case becomes legally interesting. The FSK did not impose the strictest age limit (“FSK 18”) — which would have fully shielded minors while leaving adults free to watch. It withheld classification altogether. Three objections follow:

  • Necessity / least-restrictive means. Where an “FSK 18” rating is available as a milder yet equally effective instrument for protecting minors, a total non-classification that also cuts off adult access is difficult to justify under the proportionality principle.
  • Purpose limitation. Youth-protection law may serve youth-protection ends only. If a refusal is in substance driven by the film’s political message — here, its treatment of vigilantism and a depicted, socio-politically charged crime — rather than by a genuine risk to minors, the measure operates as a disguised content restriction that Art. 5(3) GG does not permit.
  • Censorship boundary. Art. 5(1) sentence 3 GG prohibits censorship — but classically only preventive, pre-publication censorship. Whether a “no rating” outcome that produces a nationwide market blockade is functionally equivalent to censorship is the unresolved constitutional question at the heart of the dispute. Because FSK decisions carry the force of an administrative act, they are in principle reviewable by the administrative courts, including a full proportionality test.

III. The IP Dimension — Franke IP’s Analysis

The public debate has been almost exclusively constitutional. But the case sits on several fault lines that are squarely intellectual-property matters, and rights holders in the film industry should take note.

1. Exploitation rights remain intact — but commercially neutralised.
A film is a protected work under §§ 2(1) no. 6, 88 ff. UrhG, and its producer/director holds the exclusive rights of reproduction, distribution and making-available-to-the-public (§§ 16, 17, 19a UrhG). The FSK’s refusal does not affect these rights as a matter of copyright law — Boll remains the rights holder. Yet the German exploitation market is functionally switched off, because distributors and platforms require a JuSchG-compliant rating before they will carry or license the work. The lesson: a perfectly valid, enforceable copyright can be commercially worthless in a territory when public law removes the precondition for lawful distribution.

2. Licence contracts and the “valid rating” condition.
Film distribution and licensing agreements routinely make delivery of a valid age classification a condition precedent to the licence fee or to the platform’s carriage obligation. A “KK” outcome can therefore cascade into breach-of-contract, warranty or force-majeure disputes between producers, distributors and streaming licensees — an interface where IP and contract counsel work hand in hand. Producers releasing politically charged material into the German market should price classification risk into these clauses in advance, rather than drafting only for restrictive ratings.

3. Cross-border online distribution via X.
Musk’s publication of the full film on X created a separate copyright-exploitation event. Even with the rights holder’s consent, making a work available to a German audience via a foreign-hosted platform does not cure the missing German rating: the JuSchG obligations attach to the offering to German users, not to the platform’s place of establishment. The director’s § 19a UrhG right to authorise online making-available was exercised — yet the parallel public-law classification regime arguably still binds any party offering the film to users in Germany. This “battle of regimes” is one every operator distributing cross-border into Germany should anticipate.

4. Title and trademark protection for the franchise.
Film titles enjoy protection as Werktitel under § 5(3) MarkenG once sufficiently distinctive, independent of any registered mark. Where value is built across a trilogy brand (“Deutschland im Winter”), securing title rights — and considering a registered trade mark — early protects the franchise against third-party title clashes and preserves brand equity even when an individual instalment is blocked in one territory. A controversy of this scale also drives heavy third-party re-use of the title and film stills by commenting outlets, raising both Werktitel (trademark) and copyright questions, with the quotation privilege (§ 51 UrhG) as the relevant limit.

5. Moral rights, if the film is re-cut.
Should classification pressure lead to cuts or alterations, the director’s right of integrity (§ 14 UrhG) is engaged. Coerced or unauthorised alteration of the work can be independently actionable — a further point where artistic freedom and individual copyright protection converge.

IV. Takeaways

  • Producers/distributors: treat classification risk as a contractual variable — draft for a “no rating” scenario, not only for restrictive ratings.
  • Platforms: copyright authorisation and youth-protection compliance are separate, cumulative requirements; cross-border hosting does not displace German JuSchG duties.
  • Rights holders: secure Werktitel/trademark protection for franchise branding early, so brand value survives a territorial block on any single instalment.

However the administrative-court dispute over the FSK’s “KK” decision is resolved, the case is a clean illustration of how youth-protection regulation, copyright exploitation rights and trademark/title protection interlock.

Photo: © Stockcake, [CC BY 2.0]

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G 1/24 in Opposition Proceedings: New Lines of Attack – and How to Defend Against Them

Posted on June 25, 2026 by Dr. Dirk Franke

What it is about

European Patent Office

In decision G 1/24 of 18 June 2025 (“Heated Aerosol”), the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office (EPO) settled a question that had been disputed for years: patent claims must always be interpreted in the light of the description and the drawings – not only where the wording of the claim is unclear or ambiguous, but as a matter of principle. The previously inconsistent case law of the Boards of Appeal, part of which consulted the description only in cases of ambiguity, has thus come to an end.

What matters in practice: this principle of interpretation expressly applies to the assessment of novelty and inventive step, and therefore directly in opposition proceedings. An interpretation of the claims that is detached from the description and drawings is no longer permissible for the assessment of patentability. The EPO thereby aligns its practice with that of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) and the national courts, which apply Article 69 EPC in this direction in any event.

For opponents and patent proprietors alike, this shifts the rules of the game. Anyone attacking or defending in opposition must now systematically take the description into account in their arguments.

Why G 1/24 is particularly relevant to opposition

At its core, opposition turns on whether the granted claim can be maintained over the prior art. Until now, it was open to debate whether a term defined or narrowed in the description had to be taken into account at all when assessing novelty and inventive step. After G 1/24, that door is closed: the description must be consulted. This makes it – to the benefit of both sides – an active instrument of interpretation.

This cuts both ways. For the opponent, new angles arise for “loading up” the claim via the description and thereby pulling it under the prior art. For the proprietor, there is a corresponding opportunity to steer the claim into a patentable range through the description – but also a new risk where description and claim do not match.

New lines of attack for the opponent

1. The description as a lever for broad interpretation. Where the description contains definitions, examples or wording that frame a claim term more broadly than the wording alone would suggest, the opponent can insist on that broad reading – with the aim that the claim, so interpreted, encompasses a prior-art document and therefore loses novelty or inventive step. The proprietor’s own definitions in the description can in this way be turned against them.

2. Exploiting inconsistencies between claim and description. Where the description departs from the claim or contains contradictory statements, this can be used to construct an interpretative latitude that works against the proprietor. Older patents in particular, granted without an eye to G 1/24, often present openings here.

3. Attacking the “technical effect” via the description. Where the proprietor bases inventive step on a technical effect, the opponent can argue that, on the broadest reasonable interpretation of the claim wording, this effect is not in fact achieved across the entire claimed scope – i.e. that the description does not support the asserted effect consistently throughout.

4. “Clarity attacks” through the back door. Although lack of clarity (Article 84 EPC) is not a ground of opposition for granted patents, a practically similar effect can be achieved through the interpretation debate: by showing that claim and description diverge, the opponent forces the Opposition Division into an interpretation that may turn out to be disadvantageous for the proprietor.

How the proprietor defends

1. Use the description actively for a narrower, patentable interpretation. G 1/24 works in both directions. The proprietor can point to definitions and embodiments in the description in order to contour a claim term such that the prior-art document is precisely not caught. The precondition is that the description actually supports this narrower reading.

2. Know the limits of G 1/24 – which only partly favour the proprietor. This is the most important point. The first follow-up decisions of the Boards of Appeal (including T 1561/23, T 1999/23, T 0161/24 and T 1465/23) have made clear that the description cannot override a clear and generally understood meaning of a term. G 1/24 does not give the proprietor the right to escape an objection based on the prior art by artificially interpreting the claims more narrowly than their ordinary meaning permits. “Consulting the description” does not mean reading limiting definitions from the description into the claim where the term already has a clearly understandable meaning. Anyone relying on this strategy alone will come up empty-handed.

3. Draft auxiliary requests carefully and consistently. Where interpretation via the description does not carry, claim limitation remains the more reliable instrument. Auxiliary requests should map the embodiment worth protecting precisely – and the description must fit. Note: the still-pending referral G 1/25 concerns precisely the question of whether and how the description must be adapted to amended claims. Until that decision, description amendments should be handled with particular care, as they may affect later interpretation before the infringement courts.

4. Defuse contradictions before the opponent finds them. In the reply, it is advisable to address problematic passages of the description early and to set out a coherent line of interpretation, rather than leaving the opponent in control of the meaning.

Strategy at a glance

For the opponent: Systematically search the description for broad definitions, examples and contradictions that pull the claim into the prior art. Challenge the asserted technical effect across the full scope of the claim. But anchor the attack where the claim wording itself leaves room – against a clear, ordinary meaning of the words, even the description cannot prevail.

For the proprietor: Use the description as a supporting instrument of interpretation, without relying on an artificially narrow reading. Where interpretation is not enough, prepare consistent auxiliary requests early. Review existing portfolios proactively for claim/description consistency – ideally before an opposition looms.

Conclusion

G 1/24 makes the description the central battleground of opposition proceedings. It is both weapon and shield: the opponent gains a new lever via broad or contradictory passages of the description, while the proprietor gains an instrument of interpretation for the defence. The boundary is drawn by the claim wording itself – a clearly understandable meaning can be neither inflated nor defined away by the description. In practice, what will decide cases more than ever is how carefully claim and description are aligned with one another. This applies to pending oppositions just as it does to the drafting of new applications.

Photo: © Kārlis Dambrāns, [CC BY 2.0]

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Can a Departing Employee Sign Away Their Invention Compensation? What German Law Actually Says

Posted on June 23, 2026 by Dr. Dirk Franke

When a key employee leaves a company, a familiar request often lands on the legal team’s desk: “Let’s have them sign something confirming they have no further claims to compensation for their inventions.” It sounds tidy. It feels safe. And under German law, in the blanket form it is usually drafted, it frequently does not work.

Germany regulates employee inventions through a dedicated statute, the Gesetz über Arbeitnehmererfindungen (Act on Employees’ Inventions, or ArbnErfG), substantially modernised in 2009. It is one of the few areas where the law deliberately overrides freedom of contract to protect the employee. Understanding why a simple waiver fails — and what does work instead — is essential for any company that develops patentable technology with German staff.

The starting point: not every workplace invention belongs to the employer automatically

A common assumption is that anything an employee invents on the job is simply the company’s property. German law takes a more structured route.

The Act distinguishes between service inventions (Diensterfindungen) and free inventions (freie Erfindungen) in § 4 ArbnErfG. An invention made during the employment relationship is a service invention if it either:

  1. arose out of the employee’s assigned duties within the company, or
  2. is essentially based on the experience or work of the company (§ 4(2) No. 2 ArbnErfG).

Everything else is a free invention (§ 4(3)).

This second limb is where job titles become misleading. Suppose an employee’s contract describes their role as “business development,” yet in practice they carry out research that leads to patented formulations. The contractual label does not convert those inventions into free inventions. Because the work draws on the company’s know-how, materials, and environment, it will typically qualify as a service invention under § 4(2) No. 2 regardless of what the job description says. The actual activity, not the title, controls the classification.

How the employer acquires the rights — including by doing nothing

For a service invention, the Act sets out a procedural sequence:

  • The employee must report the invention to the employer in text form (Meldung, § 5 ArbnErfG).
  • The employer then claims it (Inanspruchnahme, §§ 6, 7), which transfers the rights to the employer.

The 2009 reform added a quietly powerful rule. Under § 6(2) ArbnErfG, if the employer does not expressly release the invention within four months of a proper report, the invention is deemed to have been claimed. Silence now favours the employer. In practice, where a company has filed patent applications naming its employee as inventor, this is strong evidence that the inventions were reported and claimed — and therefore that the full compensation regime applies.

The right that survives everything: reasonable compensation

Once an invention has been claimed, § 9 ArbnErfG grants the employee a statutory right to reasonable compensation (angemessene Vergütung). Three features of this right surprise employers most often:

  • It is independent of salary. The employee’s ordinary wages do not, by themselves, satisfy it.
  • It survives the end of employment. An inventor who resigns, retires, or is dismissed keeps the claim for inventions already claimed by the employer.
  • It can last as long as the patent generates value. Compensation is tied to the commercial benefit the employer derives over time.

This is precisely why the “departure waiver” is so tempting — and why the law resists it.

Why the blanket waiver fails: § 22 ArbnErfG

The decisive provision is § 22 ArbnErfG. The Act’s rules cannot be contracted away to the employee’s disadvantage. An agreement in which an employee simply confirms, in advance and in general terms, that they “cannot claim compensation” for their inventions is, in that form, very likely void.

The rationale is protective: the legislature treats the inventing employee as the structurally weaker party and refuses to let them bargain away a core statutory entitlement before its value is even known.

What does work: the post-reporting settlement

Section 22 is not, however, an absolute ban on agreements. It draws a sharp line in time. Agreements about a service invention are permissible once the invention has been reported (or otherwise made and disclosed). Before that point, the employee cannot meaningfully assess what they are giving up; afterwards, they can.

This opens the realistic path for a departing inventor. Where the inventions already exist and have been disclosed, the company and the employee can validly conclude a settlement or discharge agreement (Abgeltungsvereinbarung) covering compensation for those specific inventions. Such an agreement can include a lump-sum payment and a clean “no further claims” clause — and it will hold up, because it concerns identified, already-reported inventions rather than a blanket future surrender.

In short: the instrument is a negotiated settlement, not a unilateral waiver.

Even a valid settlement must be fair: § 23 ArbnErfG

Concluding the agreement at the right time is necessary but not sufficient. Under § 23 ArbnErfG, an otherwise admissible agreement is unenforceable if it is substantially inequitable (in erheblichem Maße unbillig). And the employee may raise that inequity for up to six months after the employment ends (§ 23(2)).

A token payment dressed up as a settlement is therefore fragile. To be robust, the figure should rest on a genuine valuation.

How compensation is actually calculated

German practice values employee inventions primarily through the licence-analogy method (Lizenzanalogie), guided by the official Richtlinien für die Vergütung von Arbeitnehmererfindungen im privaten Dienst. The core formula is:

Compensation = Invention Value × Share Factor (Erfindungswert × Anteilsfaktor)

  • The invention value is typically derived from a reasonable royalty on the relevant turnover — what a third party would have paid to licence the technology.
  • The share factor (Anteilsfaktor) reflects the employee’s actual contribution, combining three elements: how the problem was identified, how the solution was found, and the employee’s duties and position within the company.

Here lies a trap for employers. The share factor is lower when inventing is central to the employee’s job (a head of R&D is paid to invent) and higher when the invention falls outside the employee’s assigned role. So an invention produced by someone formally employed in “business development” may attract a larger employee share — meaning the very job-title argument companies hope will reduce exposure can increase it.

The other scenario: what if the invention was genuinely “free”?

Occasionally an invention really does fall outside § 4(2) — it neither arose from the employee’s duties nor essentially relied on the company’s work. Then no § 9 compensation claim arises. But this is rarely the convenient answer it appears to be, because it raises a different question: does the company actually own the invention at all?

For free inventions, the employer’s entitlement is limited (the employee must offer a non-exclusive right of use under §§ 18–19), and the company would need a valid assignment to hold full rights. Insisting an invention is “free” to avoid compensation can therefore expose a gap in the company’s chain of title to its own patents — a worse problem than the one it was meant to solve.

Resolving disputes: the Schiedsstelle

German law also provides a low-threshold forum before the courts. Under § 26 ArbnErfG, either party can bring the matter to the arbitration board (Schiedsstelle) at the German Patent and Trade Mark Office (DPMA). Its proposals are non-binding but influential, and in many disputes it is the natural first stop before litigation.

Practical takeaways

For employers:

  • Classify each invention under § 4 by reference to the actual R&D activity, not the contractual job title.
  • Keep clean records of the report (§ 5) and the claim (§§ 6, 7), including any deemed claim under § 6(2).
  • Do not rely on a blanket advance waiver — it is likely void under § 22.
  • Use a post-reporting settlement agreement instead, with a defensible valuation (licence analogy) that can survive the § 23 equity test and the six-month challenge window.
  • If you treat an invention as “free,” separately confirm you hold a valid assignment of title.

For employees and inventors:

  • Your compensation right does not disappear when you leave.
  • You cannot be made to sign it away in advance, but you can agree a settlement once your inventions have been reported.
  • You have up to six months after departure to challenge a settlement that is substantially unfair, and the Schiedsstelle offers an accessible route to do so.

The bottom line

A departing inventor cannot simply be asked to sign away compensation they are statutorily owed; § 22 ArbnErfG stands in the way. But the law is not a dead end for employers. A properly timed, fairly valued settlement — concluded after the inventions are reported and built on a real licence-analogy calculation — achieves the clean break companies want, in a form that actually holds.

The mistake is reaching for a waiver. The solution is reaching for a settlement.

Photo: © fdecomite, [CC BY 2.0]

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The Patent Grant Procedure in Belgium

Posted on June 20, 2026 by Dr. Dirk Franke

Anyone seeking protection for an invention in Belgium has two routes: a European patent designating Belgium, or a national Belgian patent. The national procedure is remarkably lean by international standards – and differs from the German or European route in one decisive respect: the Belgian office grants the patent without substantive examination of patentability. This article walks through the procedure, the formal requirements, the fees, the language regime, and a few practical points worth keeping in mind.

The office and the legal basis

The competent authority is the Belgian Office for Intellectual Property – Office de la Propriété Intellectuelle (OPRI) / Dienst voor de Intellectuele Eigendom (DIE) – part of the Federal Public Service Economy (FPS Economy / SPF Economie), based in Brussels. The legal framework is essentially Book XI of the Belgian Code of Economic Law (Code de droit économique), together with the Royal Decree of 2 December 1986. As is standard, the maximum term is 20 years from the filing date.

The guiding principle: grant without substantive examination

The defining feature of the Belgian system is that the patent is granted irrespective of the search result. A novelty search is carried out (see below), but the office does not examine patentability on the merits and will not refuse grant even where the search indicates that the invention may lack novelty or inventive step. By express statutory wording, the patent is granted without any guarantee and at the applicant’s own risk.

The practical consequence: the validity of a Belgian patent is decided, if challenged, by the courts alone. Unlike a European patent – which is regarded as a “strong”, examined right – mere grant in Belgium says nothing about whether the patent will hold up. A Belgian patent issued with an unfavourable search report is therefore not automatically worthless: the search report binds neither the office nor the court.

Filing and formal requirements

Applications are filed with the OPRI using an application form – in person, by post, by fax, or electronically via the Benelux Patent Platform (BPP). To secure a filing date, three elements suffice initially: an explicit or implicit indication that the documents are intended to constitute a patent application; information identifying the applicant and allowing the office to make contact; and a part that, at first sight, appears to be a description of the invention.

Once a filing date has been accorded, the application must contain:

  • a request for grant addressed to the competent Minister;
  • the applicant’s identification details;
  • a description of the invention, sufficiently clear and complete for a skilled person in the relevant field to carry it out;
  • one or more claims defining the scope of protection;
  • any drawings referred to in the description or claims;
  • an abstract;
  • where known, an indication of the geographical origin of any biological material from which the invention was developed;
  • the designation of the inventor (or the inventor’s request not to be named).

The pages of the application must be numbered in accordance with the OPRI circular of 13 August 2020. Proof of payment of the filing fee must reach the OPRI within one month of filing.

Regularisation: if the conditions for the filing date or other requirements are not met, the OPRI invites the applicant to remedy the deficiency. The period is three months from notification, and a regularisation fee of EUR 60 must be paid within the same period. If the application is not regularised in time, it is deemed withdrawn (or deemed not to have been filed). The applicant may also cure deficiencies on its own initiative for as long as the patent has not yet been granted.

Language regime

Belgium has three national languages – Dutch, French and German – and the procedure follows the coordinated laws on the use of languages in administrative matters. This means that the language of the proceedings and of the correspondence is determined by the language the applicant (or the person represented, even where a representative acts) must use under those administrative-language rules. In practice it is therefore driven largely by regional allocation rather than freely chosen.

Two practical points matter:

  • For the accordance of a filing date, the indication that the documents constitute a patent application and the identification details must be drafted in the prescribed national language.
  • The part appearing to be the description, by contrast, may be filed in any language (for example English), provided a translation into the prescribed national language is supplied within three months of receipt.

The novelty search by the EPO

The search fee must be paid within 13 months of the filing date (or the priority date). The search itself is carried out by the European Patent Office, which produces a novelty search report together with a written opinion on patentability. Neither the report nor the opinion is binding, and neither guarantees validity.

On the basis of the report, the applicant may:

  • withdraw the application;
  • amend the claims, abstract and, if necessary, the description (without extending the subject-matter beyond the original disclosure); or
  • keep the application as filed.

The applicant may also file written comments on the opinion for the record. The EPO does not, however, issue a revised report. The search report, the written opinion, any amendments and any comments all become part of the publicly accessible patent file.

Unity of invention / divisional applications: if the search report finds a lack of unity, it is drawn up for the invention mentioned first in the claims. Before grant, the applicant must then either limit the application or file one or more divisional applications (each carrying its own filing and search fees and any annual fees). Divisional applications retain the filing date and, where applicable, the priority date of the parent.

Publication and grant

The application is made available to the public 18 months after the filing or priority date. Once all formalities are complete and the fees due have been paid, the patent is granted by ministerial decree – as soon as possible after the 18-month period expires. On request, grant can be accelerated provided all formalities are in order; this can be useful where infringement threatens shortly after filing.

The patent is entered in the Belgian online patent register (eRegister) and published in summary form in the Recueil des Brevets d’invention. It takes effect when made available to the public. Before publication, provisional protection applies, determined by the published – or most recently filed – claims.

Fees

The national procedure is light on fees: there is no examination fee and no separate grant or publication fee. The figures below reflect the OPRI tariff as of 13 January 2026.

FeeAmountDeadline
Filing feeEUR 50within 1 month of filing
Surcharge for late payment of the filing feeEUR 25within 3 months of the invitation to pay
Correction/addition of a priority claimEUR 50on filing the request
Search fee (EPO novelty search)EUR 300at the latest 13 months from filing/priority
Regularisation of an applicationEUR 60within 3 months of the deficiency notice
Correction of errors of expression/transcriptionEUR 35on filing the request
Restoration (application/patent, or priority right)EUR 350 eachwith the request
Validation of a European patent in Belgium–currently no validation fee

Annual fees fall due from the third patent year, on the last day of the month corresponding to the anniversary of the filing date. They rise progressively:

YearEURYearEURYearEUR
340916515360
4551018516400
5751121517450
6951224018500
71101327519555
81351432020600

If an annual fee is not paid on time, a six-month grace period applies against a surcharge (EUR 85 for the 3rd–10th annuity, EUR 230 for the 11th–20th). If payment is still not made, the rights lapse – with effect from the original due date.

The annual fees also apply to European patents validated in Belgium (without unitary effect). Annual fees for unitary patents, by contrast, are paid directly to the EPO and are not collected by the OPRI.

What else to keep in mind

Validation of European patents – no translation required. Since 1 January 2017, Belgium no longer requires a translation of the specification to validate a European patent granted (or maintained as amended after opposition, or limited) in English, French or German – the relevant trigger being publication of the mention of grant on or after that date. A translation of the claims remains relevant for establishing provisional protection of a still-pending EP application. No validation fee is currently charged.

Unitary patent and the Unified Patent Court. Belgium participates in the European patent with unitary effect; the Unified Patent Court (UPC) has been operational since 1 June 2023, with a local division in Brussels. Annual fees for unitary patents are paid solely to the EPO.

Abolition of the short-term patent. Belgium’s former short-term patent (a six-year right without a search) was abolished when Book XI of the Code of Economic Law entered into force on 22 September 2014. Only the regular patent, with a mandatory search, remains.

PCT. Since 1 April 2018, the OPRI no longer acts as a receiving office for international applications under the PCT. The corresponding procedural fees are paid directly to the competent receiving office.

Representation. Applicants without a domicile or establishment in the European Economic Area must act through a representative registered with the OPRI (mandataire agréé). More generally, appointing an address for service is advisable so that the office can reliably reach the applicant.

Re-establishment of rights. Where an applicant or proprietor misses a time limit, a restoration procedure is in principle available. It is, however, excluded for certain deadlines – among them the period for regularising an application and certain annual fees arising from a restoration.

A Belgian patent as a first filing. The national patent works well as a priority-founding first filing: it can serve as the basis for claiming priority in other countries within twelve months. That makes it attractive even for applicants who initially have only the Belgian market in view, or who want to secure a priority date inexpensively.

Takeaway

A Belgian patent is quick and inexpensive to obtain: low official fees, no examination fee and no grant fee, a clearly timed procedure with the search handled by the EPO, and grant typically around 18 months after filing. The price of that leanness is the absence of substantive examination – the robustness of the right only becomes apparent if it is challenged in court. Applicants choosing the national route should therefore take the EPO’s search report and written opinion seriously and amend the claims, where sensible, before grant.

Photo: © OliBac, [CC BY 2.0]

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