Consultancy in the fields of IP and IPR

infeurope provided a helpdesk for Horizon 2020 framework programme beneficiaries with legal experts in the field of Intellectual Property and Intellectual Property Rights, supporting users in 28 member states of the EU in this field. This encompassed IPR support in infringement and enforcement of rights, as well as training on various aspects of IP.

Moreover, infeurope provides services in relation to IP matters in form of helpdesks. One of our flagship projects is the 1 LCEU for the European Patent Office.


The 1LCEU within the European Patent Office

infeurope provides the First Line Customer Enquiry Unit (1LCEU) for the European Patent Office (EPO). Headquartered in Munich with branches in The Hague, Berlin and Vienna the EPO has a staff of approximately 7.000 staff members and handles over 165.000 patent applications per year. The official languages of the EPO are English, French and German. Within the organisation of the EPO, the 1LCEU is a key function which is part of the User Support and Quality Management.

Service coverage

As an important part of the DG1 directorate at the EPO, the 1LCEU acts as a first point of contact for external EPO users, providing enquiry logging and customer support services for all EPO sites in multiple languages. The 1LCEU provides direct support to external clients and also assigns enquiries to responsible departments within the EPO. Furthermore, the 1LCEU provides first-level support on patent application matters, predominantly non-procedurally. The service hours are Monday to Friday from 07h45 to 18h15 CET (except for EPO holidays).

Holistic service provision

infeurope provides a full Customer Enquiry service, mainly onsite at the premises of the EPO in Munich. Our service includes implementing and managing the operational staff, the procedures and the training and upskilling of all personnel to ensure that the services are delivered on time and to the highest quality. Moreover, the service is provided with trilingual staff covering up to 17 languages within the team. The monthly service volume reaches peaks of up to 25.000 interactions and the team provides the service working in a shift system. The service provision undergoes a regular and systematic quality evaluation procedure, thereby ensuring an excellent service provision to the clients of the EPO.

Our mission

  • provision of legal support
  • operation of a helpline
  • awareness raising activities
  • dissemination of information
  • operation of a helpdesk web portal

Our achievements

  • over 9000 registered users
  • weekly newsletter to over 7000 users
  • more than 50 high quality publications
  • over 1000 daily visitors