Patents Protect with WIPANO
If you want to start a company today and protect your technical innovations, you should find out about patent applications at an early stage. With WIPANO, founders have an interesting option for patent promotion, which can be used to cover the costs of filing a patent application. A patent and its application are so important because no one wants to see their innovation in market-ready products sold by competitors.
WIPANO funds promising companies and their ideas and thus reduces the costs of patent application procedures. WIPANO's patent application is worthwhile for many young and innovative companies wanting to fully exploit their ideas and protect their intellectual property.
WIPANO is an acronym for "knowledge and technology transfer through patents and standards". Patent applications entail various expenses, such as fees, which are often difficult to finance, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises. WIPANO is a suitable solution for this financing problem. Companies daring to enter the market with their invention should be encouraged to protect their intellectual property and patent their ideas by using WIPANO's offers.
What is the Purpose of WIPANO's Support for Patent Applications?
WIPANO's patent support aims to exploit the creative potential of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and to make inventions from the field of public research commercially exploitable. WIPANO serves to transfer the latest research findings to industry and, for this purpose, relies on standardization as a strategic market instrument. Funding is intended to ensure that the current state of the art is available to the industry quickly and with appropriate visibility.
Who is the Publisher of the Patent Grant WIPANO?
WIPANO's patent promotion program is published by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy (BMWi). It helps companies and research institutions to finance patent application procedures such as registration fees and patent attorney costs. Thus, it ultimately helps in the successful development of a product idea and its implementation with the patent subsidy WIPANO.
Who is Supported by WIPANO?
WIPANO promotes public research as well as private-sector research in companies. The program supports state or state-recognized universities either individually or in combination. Funding for non-university institutions is also provided for if these are publicly basic-financed and operate in an eligible association with universities.
Applicants from the private sector are eligible if their business is based in Germany and their main occupation. The funding program is aimed at commercial enterprises and self-employed persons pursuing a liberal profession in natural sciences and technology. This is the case if a university degree in natural sciences or technology and a tax office notification of this activity are given.
Corporate support is restricted exclusively to for SMEs. Hence, the company has to have less than 250 employees and an annual turnover below 50 million euros, or, alternatively, an annual balance sheet total not exceeding 43 million euros.
Furthermore, in the last five years before the application, no other patent application or utility model application has been filed yet, and the project must not yet have been started. This is to ensure that only new ideas and developments receive support.
What is Supported by WIPANO and How Much?
WIPANO has three funding priority principles. Firstly, support for patenting aims at public research and company research performance. Secondly, support for recovery aims at exploiting and marketing intellectual property rights, which can be improved by even relatively minor further developments. Thirdly, support for standardization aims at the actual transfer of research findings to industry. Public research institutions must demonstrate that their R&D results can be technically implemented.
In practice, funding differentiates between eligible services and so-called service packages ("Leistungspakete" - LP). Maximum funding is coupled to the service package. WIPANO offers the packages below for application:
- Rough examination of the invention (LP 1): superficial examination of patentability; funding capped at 800 EUR
- Detailed examination of the invention (LP 2): examination of state of the art and economic usability with possible cost-benefit analysis; funding capped at 800 EUR
- Advice and coordination on patent applications (LP 3): assistance in searching for a suitable patent attorney and coordinating strategy as well as helping in exchanging information with the attorney; funding capped at 1.000 EUR
- Patent application (LP 4): promoting patent application, i.e.financing patent attorney services, as well as funding for official patent application costs; capped at 10.000 EUR
- Measures for the exploitation of the patent (LP 5): promoting patent exploitation measures, which may include strategy development as well as prototype construction or filing trademark and design applications; capped at 4.000 EUR
Accordingly, WIPANO funding is not restricted to the patent application costs. Consultations prior to registration and aftercare may also be funded as well.
WIPANO is limited by an upper limit of 33.150 EUR for all eligible expense funding. Since WIPANO covers up to 50 percent of expenditures, the maximum subsidy is 16.575 EUR. This amount is then distributed over above mentioned five service packages.
