Status: 03/28/2023 12:17 p.m
Energy transition and digital technology have driven the number of patent applications in the EU to a record high. However, there were again fewer registrations from Germany.
The energy transition and digital communication were the biggest innovation drivers last year. This is reflected in the patent statistics, as reported by the European Patent Office (EPO). Overall, the number of patent applications to the Munich-based authority rose by 2.5 percent last year to a record 193,460.
EPO President Antonio Campinos said more applications for patent protection were being filed, especially for clean energy technology and other processes for generating, distributing and storing electricity. “The ongoing upswing in this area is helping to advance the energy transition.” The biggest growth in this area was in battery technology, which experienced a veritable boom with an increase of 48 percent, the EPA reported.
However, digital communication remains the leader in terms of annual registrations, in which 16,705 patents alone were filed, eleven percent more than in 2022.
German registrations continue to decline
In contrast, fewer patent applications came from Germany. These fell 4.7 percent to 24,684 – the lowest level in more than a decade. “The proportion of German patent applications at the EPO has fallen from 17.9 to 12.8 percent over the past ten years,” said EPO economist Ilja Rudyk. The main reason is a shift between the sectors. “There is particularly strong growth in digital areas. These do not play such a big role in patent applications from Germany,” says Rudyk. “On the other hand, patent applications are stagnating in the fields that are strong in Germany, such as mechanical engineering and vehicle technology.”
However, Germany is still in second place behind the USA (48,088). But especially China, which is currently in fourth place behind Japan, is catching up. In 2013 there were 4,075 patent applications from China, last year there were 19,041,” said Rudyk. “In purely mathematical terms, if the trend continues, China could at least have caught up with Germany in three years.”
Front runner Huawei
With Huawei, the world’s most eager patent applicant came from China again. The controversial telecom supplier submitted 4505 applications to the EPA. It was followed by the Korean LG, ahead of the US chip company Qualcomm, which overtook Siemens. The Munich technology group registered 1735 patents.
However, the sheer number of patent applications can be misleading. “One of the reasons for the high number of patents for some top applicants is that this is about mobile phone patents for 5G and 6G,” said the head of the Siemens patent department, Beat Weibel. “These patents are typically licensed in pools, and the more a company brings in, the larger their share of the royalties,” he explained. “Accordingly, it is worth registering as many patents there as possible, some of which are also small. That does not correspond to our approach.”
The European Patent Office is an organization independent of the European Union. Almost every country on the continent has joined. Only Russia, Belarus and Ukraine have regulated their patent protection independently.