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Information for the Employees of Marburg University

In the event that an employee of Marburg University should come up with an invention which can be patented or utility model-compatible, they are subject to the German Employee Inventions Act (ArbNErfG of 25 July 1957, as last amended on 18 January 2002. For the specific purpose of this law, employees include all civil servants, employees, and workers.

Following amendment to§42  the German Employee Inventions Act, the legal framework for invention and patents for in the higher education sector fundamentally altered. The previous privilege of declaring inventions by university professors as free inventions has been abolished. It has meanwhile been replaced by a regulation according to which the general provisions of the ArbNErfG equally apply, in principle, to university inventions. The general law on Employees’ Invention has been amended in the higher education sector with regard to the constitutional protection for research and teaching, the inventor’s remuneration, and the exclusion of the use of revenue shares. This new law came into force on 7 February 2002 and applies to the following: Any invention made by a university employee in their official capacity must be reported by the inventor to the service owner/employer (§ Section 5). In order to report this invention, please use the form below Erfindungsmeldung (PDF in german language, please fill in on screen)

Such a Service Invention may be claimed by the employer within four months (Sec 6 et seq.), protected by copyright in his or her own name, and exploited on behalf of the university in question. In this instance, the inventor is entitled to an inventor’s remuneration (Set 9 et seq.) amounting to thirty per cent of the revenue generated by the exploitation (Sec 42. No 4).

For more detailed information on this topic, please contact Ms , our in-house specialist for inventions, patents, and their exploitation.