Career paths

Requirements

The personal requirements that have to be met if one wants to pursue a career in the protection of industrial property are:

• a science or engineering degree
• a readiness to carry out work involving national and international law
• an ability to take an abstract view and analyse the facts
• an ability to constantly build knowledge of the current prior art
• being able to express oneself clearly in German and enjoying doing so
• a good knowledge of English and a basic knowledge of French

Exams

Only those who have first passed an exam according to Article 8 of the German Patent Attorney Regulations can become a patent assessor/patent attorney. There are two different routes to achieving this, namely:

a) Candidate training - Article 7 of the German Patent Attorney Regulations

• one year of technical practice in the field
• two years of distance learning of general law
• 26 months of training at a patent attorney’s or patent assessor’s office
• 8 months of training at the German Patent and Trade Mark Office and the German Federal Patent Court
• Exam (written and oral) on three possible dates per year

or

b) Many years of practice in the field - Article 158 of the German Patent Attorney Regulations

• two years of distance learning of general law
• 8* or 10 years of practice in the field of industrial property in Germany
• Exam (written and oral) on three possible dates per year

(see also http://www.patent-und-markenamt.de/amt/aufgaben/patentanwaltsausbildung/index.html)

Important for candidates who wish to pass the German patent attorney exam on or after 1 June 2018:

New Training and Examination Regulations:
The version approved by Federal Minister Maas, as was forwarded to the Bundesrat by the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection (via the Federal Chancellery) on 19.07.2017 with a request for approval, will, if the Bundesrat approves this version at its session on 22 September 2017, provisionally come into force on 1 October 2017 and be valid for the first time in respect of the exam in June 2018.
Download HERE

The German Patent and Trade Mark Office has also published new information on the training and examination of patent attorneys. These are available HERE.

Only those who have first passed the European qualifying exam can be approved as a European representative, that is to say:

• three years of practice in the field of industrial property on a full-time basis
• Exam on one possible date per year

(see also http://www.epo.org/learning-events/eqe_de.html)

*anyone who has already passed the European qualifying exam
** University or vocational academy graduates