Research

Large-scale DFG project: DDR form treasure digitised for the first time

As part of a project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), PATON I Landespatentzentrum Thüringen, together with the University Library and the Department of Computer Graphics at Ilmenau University of Technology, has succeeded in cataloguing and digitising the treasure trove of GDR designs. Thus, an important part of East German cultural assets has been made accessible for effective design research.

[Translate to English:] Warenzeichen- und Geschmacksmusterblatt
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They are considered design classics and even enjoy cult status today: the Simson motorcycles designed by Karl Clauss Dietel, the Hellerau furniture series 602 designed by Franz Ehrlich or the stackable hotel porcelain RATIONELL designed by Margarete Jahny and Erich Müller, which went down in East German history as Mitropa tableware (see photo above). Just three examples of the thousands of designs that make up the GDR's treasure trove of shapes.

Until recently, this existed only physically in the form of index cards, photographs, drawings, product samples and trademark sheet booklets. It was thus hardly accessible to the public. Within the framework of the project "Indexing and digitisation of the GDR design collection", funded by the DFG with 320,000 euros over a period of three years, the data from the file card archive of the Information and Service Centre of the German Patent and Trade Mark Office in Berlin (DPMA-IDZ) and the trade mark and design sheets (in booklet form) collected in the PATON magazine were merged and electronically processed under the leadership of PATON director Dr. Christoph Hoock.

Our aim was to bring together the design publications from the GDR period, which had previously only existed in paper form, and to create a database for effective use of this information for research purposes and the interested public," says Dr Hoock. "The project involved both demanding research work and an enormous amount of hard work, for which I would like to express my great appreciation to all the staff involved in the project.

Stocks from DPMA-IDZ and PATON recorded

At special workstations in the university library, the index cards, photos, fabric and product samples provided by the DPMA-IDZ for the work were digitised using an optical scanning process. A total of 187 boxes with index cards and several boxes with photos, fabric samples, items of clothing such as ladies' gloves, stockings, baby bibs, packaging material, plans, drawings, sketches and slides were scanned.

In addition, the trademark sheets in 271 booklets, partly bound into books, from the PATON stock were added as a second source. A total of around 56,000 scans were made and bibliographically processed. In total, both holdings cover the period from 1952 to 1993. The particular challenge here lay not only in the enormous quantity, but also - as is so often the case - in the detail: "Some of the information on the index cards was illegible, samples and bound issues of the trademark gazette were sometimes difficult to scan," reports Dr. Johannes Wilken from the University Library. "We are very proud to have successfully accomplished this mammoth task."

The text data and illustrations from the various sources were then merged in PATON and made accessible and cleaned through data structuring.

After correcting for errors, we were able to record over 90 percent of all designs," says Sabine Milde, PATON project coordinator. "This is an excellent result.

GDR design treasure trove searchable online for the first time

The Group of Graphic Data Processing finally took care of processing the data ready for publication into a machine-readable form. In doing so, the researchers were able to build on the experience gained from the Digital Mechanism and Gear Library DMGLIB, which was also developed as part of a DFG project and in which data from heterogeneous sources was also brought together, digitised and thus made publicly accessible. Finally, access to the GDR's treasure trove of forms will be provided via a PATON server, along the lines of PATONline, via which 43 million patent documents can already be accessed. "We are very pleased," emphasises Dr. Ulf Döring of the Department of Graphic Data Processing, "that within the framework of the project we have succeeded, in intensive cooperation, in now making the GDR mould treasure accessible to all interested parties and searches via an easy-to-use search engine."

High recognition from the German Patent and Trademark Office

At the end of the project, the partners met in a hybrid event on 21 September, partly on site in the Senate Hall of the Technical University of Ilmenau and partly via video link to evaluate the results. Project leader Dr. Hoock was able to welcome experts from the German Patent and Trademark Office and the German Society for Information and Knowledge. The guests were impressed by the work done at the TU Ilmenau. Markus Ortlieb, Senior Director at the German Patent and Trademark Office, said:

The designs are a cultural asset reflecting a piece of the zeitgeist of the GDR and have now been made accessible to the public for the first time.

In addition to its historical significance, the collection will also be used from a legal point of view: The newly opened up treasure trove of GDR designs can then be searched digitally for the first time. Even though the term of protection of all designs and industrial models of the GDR has already expired and thus no third party infringements can exist against these designs, they nevertheless play a role in the assessment of novelty and individual character of future designs and can be included in design invalidity proceedings.

All participants agreed to initiate a follow-up project. Here, further register data, which are, however, available as manuscripts, and newly discovered photographs are to be merged with the existing data in high quality. In addition, an interface to the DPMA Register search system is to be created in order to extend the search options nationwide. A cooperation with the ThULB is also planned in order to make the data accessible to the public via their interfaces, of course, while respecting the rights of the original authors.

Contact

Dr. Christoph Hoock

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