Patents and R&D expenditure - Issue number 16/2006 - Products Statistics in Focus

The Statistics in Focus publication analyses the breakdown of patent applications to the European Patent Office (EPO) by institutional sectors, showing the patenting activity of EU enterprises. The main findings show that the business enterprise sector dominates the patenting activity both in the EU and the US and that patenting is less expensive in the EU than in the US. The publication also analyses the results of the patent Scorecard 2006.