The increasing demands on cutting tools are nowadays mainly met by the application of hard coatings. The Ti1-xAlxN coating system has successfully been applied for a wide field of applications, due to its high wear- and oxidation resistance. A common way for the production of this coating system is physical vapor deposition (PVD). On laboratory scale, a high potential for improving the mechanical and thermal properties as well as the tribological behavior has already been found by alloying with further elements, e.g. Ta. These (Ti,Al,Ta)N coatings have only been produced in laboratory scale facilities. Now an up-scaling of this development to industrial scale facilities should be performed. Additionally, the bias voltage should be varied in order to optimize the morphology of the resulting coatings with respect to structural, tribological and mechanical properties. Furthermore, the role of the hcp phase in the dual phase fcc-(Ti,Al,Ta)N + hcp-(Ti,Al,Ta)N system should be determined by increasing the Al content, while the Ta content remains constant. The results of these investigations should be compared to the properties of conventional Ti1-xAlxN coatings with the same Al/Ti ratios deposited with the same conditions (bias voltage).