The DPMA API for trademark search

The Deutsches Patent- und Markenamt (DPMA) is the German national authority responsible for examining and registering trademarks, patents, utility models, and designs in Germany. Headquartered in Munich with additional offices in Jena and Berlin, it operates under the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection and maintains the German trademark register under the German Trade Mark Act (Markengesetz). The register contains roughly 5 million records dating back to October 1894 and receives approximately 80,000 new national trademark applications per year — making DPMA the largest national trademark office in the European Union.

Because Germany is an EU member state, most applicants who want broad European coverage file an EU trademark (EUTM) at EUIPO — a single EUTM covers all 27 EU countries, Germany included, for not much more than a German national fee. DPMA's national register exists for the case where applicants only need German protection, want to lock in an earlier German seniority date before extending via Madrid, are responding to local prior rights that would block a wider EUTM, or want examination in German under the Markengesetz with appeals to the Bundespatentgericht. DPMA is also a Madrid Protocol member, so Germany can be designated through WIPO as an alternative to a direct DPMA filing.

DPMA exposes the register through two main channels. DPMAregister is the free public web search — accessible without registration, with results downloadable as CSV or XLSX and historical records back to 1894. DPMAdatenabgabe (the data-supply service), together with DPMAconnectPlus (a paid SSL-encrypted REST interface), publishes weekly trademark data packages on Fridays for bulk and programmatic consumers under a connection fee plus per-package costs. Signa is building its DPMA connector against these feeds for Q3 2026; on launch it will normalize the German-language register, the Markengesetz event vocabulary, and Madrid designations of Germany into the same unified schema used for USPTO, EUIPO, and every other office.