Pan-European Seal: Professional IP Traineeship Program

EUIPO Traineeships

The University of Vienna is a member of the Pan-European Seal Professional IP Traineeship Program.

The Pan-European Seal Professional IP Traineeship Program (the Pan-European Seal) is a comprehensive IP program, which forms a bridge between academia and the IP labor market.

Jointly promoted by the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) and the European Patent Office (EPO), two of the world's largest IP offices, this program targets leading European universities as strategic partners and offers up to 100 paid traineeships every year, which start in mid-September and are 12 months long. The training takes place at the headquarters of EUIPO (Alicante, Spain) and EPO (Munich, Germany).

High-achieving young university graduates have the opportunity to gain valuable on-the-job professional work experience in the multicultural environments of the EUIPO and the EPO. The Pan-European Seal Program provides a framework for early talent detection through these traineeships at the EUIPO and EPO.

Application requirements

All candidates must fulfill the following application requirements:

(a) Applications are open to students, who graduated or will graduate from one of the University of Vienna's Master, PhD, or Postgraduate Programs in the current academic year, i.e. in the period from October 1 to September 30. Therefore, also students, who will obtain their LLM degree until September 30, are eligible to apply as well. Such students must be aware that any traineeship offered by the EUIPO will be conditioned to the submission of the LLM degree certificate (it can be a provisional certificate) upon arrival at the EUIPO by mid-September, or beginning of October at the latest.

(b) All candidates must also have a full undergraduate university degree certificate (or its equivalent).

(c) Nationality: According to EUIPO's Decision No. ADM 18-12, candidates must have the nationality of an EU Member State or of a candidate country for EU Membership. Currently, the EUIPO also accepts a limited number of third-country nationals (10% of traineeships).

(d) All candidates must have completed at least one of these two online EUIPO Academy Learning Portal courses with a certificate (certificate of completion):

EUTM in a Nutshell
RCD in a Nutshell

(e) All candidates must have knowledge of one of EUIPO's five working languages (German, English, French, Italian or Spanish).

(f) Candidates shall not have benefited or be benefiting from any kind of inservice traineeship (paid or unpaid) and shall not be or have been an assistant to a Member of the European Parliament, a contractual consultant or intra-muros researcher, or a temporary, contract, auxiliary or interim staff member within a European institution, agency or body.

Application documents

(a) CV in English in Europass Word format.

(b) Motivation letter in English, indicating a preferred traineeship area and declaring the choice of traineeship location (EUIPO or EPO).

(c) Undergraduate university degree certificate (or its equivalent).

(d) LLM degree certificate. Students, who plan to complete the LLM program until September 30, must submit a declaration of the University of Vienna, which states that it is very likely that the student will complete the LLM program until September 30.

(e) Certificate(s) of completion of at least one of these two online EUIPO Academy Learning Portal courses:

EUTM in a Nutshell (approx. 4 working hours)
RCD in a Nutshell (approx. 4 working hours)

For the above online courses, candidates must register (create an account) through the EUIPO Academy Learning Portal (EALP), as a member of the Pan-European Seal (by selecting "University of Vienna" in the registration's drop-down menu), and log in on the EUIPO Academy Learning Portal. Please note that the number of EUIPO Academy Learning Portal courses completed with certificate by each candidate will be taken into consideration by the EUIPO when assessing the applications.

Selection procedure

Application deadline: February 9, 2025 (23:59 CET).

Please send your complete application as one single pdf file to the following e-mail address: international.office@univie.ac.at

In addition, please mail a copy of your application to eiblaw@univie.ac.at.

The pre-selection procedure of the University of Vienna will begin immediately after the expiration of the application deadline. The University of Vienna will send a shortlist of potential candidates (nominations), which may include up to 10 candidates from the present academic year, to the EUIPO. Applicants, who have received a space on the shortlist, will be informed accordingly by the International Office of the University of Vienna. However, inclusion in the shortlist does not guarantee that the candidates will be selected by the EUIPO and offered a traineeship position at the EUIPO.

March 1-31: Once the candidates have been informed by the International Office of the University of Vienna that they are short-listed, all shortlisted candidates must submit their application through the e-recruitment tool, which is available on the Pan-European Seal Programme section of the EUIPO Traineeship website, until March 31.

April: Selection process at EUIPO

May-July: Selected candidates will be contacted by EUIPO, in order to provide them with information about the EUIPO Department for which they have been selected and the task description related to the traineeship.

mid-September: Start of the traineeship

All selected candidates must provide the original LLM degree certificate of the University of Vienna to the EUIPO Traineeship Unit on their first day at the EUIPO.