No. If Henkel determines that your published or granted intellectual property right could be utilized as it is or in a slightly modified form, Henkel would offer either to purchase the patent, utility model or design from you or to enter into a licensing agreement with you.

A patent is an industrial property right issued by a national or international patent office giving the owner the right to exclude others from making, using, or selling their invention in the concerned country or countries. In exchange for this grant, the inventors have to disclose their invention to the public in the form of the published patent application.

Please contact your national or a regional patent office. You can find a list under http://www.wipo.int/directory/en/urls.jsp .  In case there is no Patent Office mentioned for your country, please contact your national Department of Trade and Industry.

The review and evaluation process could take several months. When the review and evaluation is complete you will receive notification via e-mail on the status of your product submission... either:

• There is a potential business fit and we would like to proceed with further evaluation.

• There is a potential business fit, however, we require more information.

• There is no business fit.

Please understand that we will not share this information with you.

Yes, as Prof. Dr. Ulrich Lehner, Chairman of the Management Board of Henkel KGaA, internally announced 2006 to be the “Year of Innovation” - and the Henkel Innovation Trophy perfectly fits this motto. The concept behind the project is to enrich the product development process with external ideas from independent inventors. Besides this, the goal of Henkel Innovation Trophy itself is to increase the speed of launching innovations to the market (by 2008, Henkel wants to be generating around one third of its sales through new products).

Henkel offers the inventors an ideal platform to expose their ideas to those who can promote them the best: the executives from a leading consumer goods company and the members of inventor associations. Moreover four ideas will be awarded with the Henkel Innovation Trophy.

We collect ideas for all globally operating business sectors of Henkel: Laundry & Home Care, Cosmetics/Toiletries and Adhesives Technologies. Please find more information here.

The international Jury is composed of representatives of inventors associations and experts from Henkel.

We will enter into a market assessment phase with the inventor. As we do with all our new product initiatives, we will conduct an appropriate consumer test. In the end, we will – in case of potential success – enter into a licensing agreement with the independent inventor.