WIPANO (Promotion of Patenting and Exploitation)

• Small and medium-sized enterprises in the commercial sector and self-employed professionals in the free scientific/technical professions. Applicants must operate their business as their main occupation and have a branch or business establishment in Germany.
• Businesses – in particular SMEs –, state and state-recognized universities as well as non-university, publicly funded research institutions and regulatory authorities with a business establishment or branch in Germany. Only cooperation projects with at least one publicly funded research institution and at least one business partner are eligible for funding.
• State and state-recognized universities as individual applicants or in a consortium. Universities are free to decide whether or not to join a consortium. There is no obligation to join a consortium. On the other hand, non-university, publicly funded research institutions are only eligible for funding in a consortium with at least one university.
• All universities and non-university, publicly funded research institutions participating in the WIPANO exploitation promotion must have their seat in Germany.

Supporting public research as well as small and medium-sized enterprises in the protection and exploitation of intellectual property, starting with the review of the idea up to the exploitation of the invention. By involving one or more qualified external service providers, a technically competent support should be ensured.

Further development and proof of the functionality or technical feasibility of research and development results secured by intellectual property rights of universities and non-university research institutions, which are recipients of grants within the WIPANO exploitation promotion.
Standardized preparation and diffusion of research and development results on a national (DIN/DKE), European (CEN/CENELEC) or international (ISO/IEC) level for and into standardization. Projects are funded to support the market penetration of innovative products, technologies or services through standards and standards, e.g. by developing test standards or developing uniform interfaces, terminologies, classifications as well as reference architectures or standard processes. The respective projects should have the goal of a standard draft or the draft of a new standard.

The eligible technical requirements are assigned to individual performance packages (LP). This also ensures sustainable decision-making bases for further action. The performance packages are to be provided by one or more qualified external service providers or patent attorneys (LP 4). The choice of service provider is free. Information on evaluation criteria for selecting qualified external service providers is available at wipano.de.

• Within the framework of Public Research - Exploitation Promotion, the grant is granted as a fixed amount financing for LP 1 - 3 and 5 - 6 and as a share financing (max. 35% of eligible expenses) for LP 4. The grants are non-repayable subsidies.
• Within the framework of companies, the grant is granted as a share financing and is provided as a non-repayable grant. The amount of the grant per project is 50% of the eligible expenses with a maximum grant amount of €16,575. The project duration is a maximum of 24 months. Under the following link you will find an overview of the respective grant amounts for the performance packages LP 1 - 6.