While the development in mechanical engineering has been going on for centuries, there are still many innovations in this technical field. From mass-market components in the automotive field to specialized machine tools and medical devices, new inventions need protection.

Another traditional field is optical engineering. Inventions in this field are for example directed to new approaches in microscopy, optics-based metrology, or – sometimes interfacing with mechanical engineering – efficient manufacturing of lenses.

A particular challenge in these fields is the increasing number of inventions, which, besides traditional mechanics or optics, include software-related components. Such components for example control mechanical or optical devices or process images captured by optical devices.