The European Patent Office (EPO) received more patent applications last year than ever before. The EPO received a total of 188,600 filings, 4.5 percent more than in the previous year. “This underscores the creativity and resilience of inventors in Europe and around the world,” said EPO President António Campinos.
“We’re back on track,” said EPA chief economist Yann Ménière. “The quite significant increase in registrations last year compensates for the small decline in the previous year. For companies, research and development mean long-term investments that are not so strongly influenced by crises.” According to the information, Germany is in second place with 25,969 applications, behind the USA with 46,533. Japan and China follow. France, the second-placed EU country, has 10,537 applications.
At the level of the companies with the most registrations, Huawei is just ahead of Samsung with 3439 with 3544. The best-placed German company is Siemens in fifth place with 1720 registrations. Without the spin-off of Siemens Energy a year and a half ago, which alone has 748 registrations and 21st place, it would have – purely mathematically – even just been enough for third place. Bosch comes in tenth with 1289 ahead of BASF with 1284.
The German registrations came mainly from the areas of electrical machines and transport with 2103 and 2020 registrations, as well as measurement and medical technology with 1562 and 1426 registrations. This means that the focus here is somewhat different than in the rest of the world, where digital communication, medical technology and computer technology are at the forefront.
In a comparison of the federal states and regions, Bavaria is ahead in the EPA statistics both nationally and across Europe. With 7656 registrations, Bavaria beats North Rhine-Westphalia (5248), Baden-Württemberg (5087) and Île-de-France (6705).
Munich accounts for almost half of the Bavarian registrations, which also leads the German city comparison by a long way. They are followed by Ludwigshafen, Stuttgart, Berlin and Leverkusen. Although Munich benefits to some extent from its role as the seat of the EPO, the effect is manageable and does not distort the statistics, said Ménière.
The numbers of the EPO differ significantly from those of the German Patent Office. In February, Baden-Württemberg was identified as the state with the most patents and Bosch as the leading company. Ménière suspected that different registration strategies of the companies could be behind this. Siemens, for example, was not even included in the list of companies with the highest number of applications to the German Patent Office.