About us

The success of your business is built on innovations. Innovations are the basis and the driving force of every economic system.
Granting intellectual property rights to your innovations is the task of the Austrian Patent Office, the central authority for industrial property law in Austria. Successful concepts and technical developments ‘invite’ imitations. Temporary intellectual property rights with a monopoly nature help with this. The Austrian Patent Office effectively provides you with security and, as the national competence centre, safeguards your legitimate interests. Patents, protection certificates and utility models protect your inventions, while registrations protect your trademarks and designs.

Such a concentrated amount of expertise relating to industrial property law cannot be found anywhere else in Austria. In the Patent Office, over 200 experts are responsible for protecting the inventions, designs and trademarks of Austrian businesses. They examine each individual case in compliance with the strictest quality criteria and provide your products with the best possible protection.

As a Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) authority, the Austrian Patent Office is one of the best centres for the protection of intellectual property in the world, and has been since 1979. In our role as an International Searching and Examining Authority, we create over 1000 international search reports each year.

Stefan Harasek became President of the Austrian Patent Office (ÖPA) on December 1, 2023 .

Harasek started his work for the ÖPA in 2004 as a patent examiner, built up the staff unit Strategy of the ÖPA and helped to shape the orientation of the ÖPA in his function as a board member of this staff unit since 2016. In 2022, he was appointed vice president for inventions. He had already headed the Austrian Patent Office on an interim basis since July 2023. In addition to his work for the Austrian Patent Office he was a technical member of the former Supreme Patent and Trademark Senate and an expert lay judge in patent cases at the Supreme Court.

One focus of his work is to combine the official activities of the ÖPA with services and information in order to best support the needs of innovators and the public.