Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union

E2: Environmental statistics and accounts; sustainable development

e-mail contact: ESTAT-SDI-EU2020-INDICATORS@ec.europa.eu

The indicator is part of the EU Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) indicator set. It is used to monitor progress towards SDG 9 on industry, innovation and infrastructure.

Among other things, SDG 9 recognises the importance of technological progress and innovation for finding lasting solutions to social, economic and environmental challenges such as the creation of new jobs and promotion of resource and energy efficiency. To foster innovation and entrepreneurship, SDG 9 also seeks to increase access to financial services for small-scale enterprises and to bridge the digital divide by increasing access to information and communication technologies.

Patents provide a valuable measure of the exploitation of research results and of inventiveness of countries, regions and companies.

The Europe 2020 strategy sets the target of “improving the conditions for innovation, research and development” and the European Commission has committed to invest at least 3% of the EU’s GDP in R&D by 2020 in the 2014 Commission Communication ‘Taking stock of the 2020 strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth’.

The indicator measures the requests for protection of an invention directed either directly to the European Patent Office (EPO) or filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty and designating the EPO (Euro-PCT), regardless of whether they are granted or not. If one application to the EPO has more than one inventor, the application is divided equally among all of them and subsequently among their countries of residence, thus avoiding double counting. Euro-PCT applications are allocated according to the nationality of the first listed applicant. The data shows the total number of applications per country and per million inhabitants.

Total number and number per million inhabitants.

Calendar year.

Indicator from non-ESS source. For assessment of accuracy please refer to the original source (see link to external data source and metadata in “Annexes")

EPO (PATSTAT)

Data source: Worldwide Patent Statistical Database (PATSTAT)

Data Provider: European Patents Office (EPO)

Every year

Indicator is updated annually

> T+2 years

New data points are disseminated within two years after the reference year, with the latest year being estimated.

All EU MS

Data are presented for all EU Member States plus the United Kingdom, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland, Turkey, Russia, Canada, United States, Brazil, Japan, South Korea and India.

All EU MS

Data are comparable between all EU Member States respectively other presented countries.

> 10 years

Presented time series (including EU aggregates) starts in 2000.

3 to 4 data points

Length of comparable time series without methodological breaks is longer than 4 data points. The change in the estimation methodology applied to data from 2015 onwards has no impact on data comparability over time.

Users should take note that decreasing numbers for the latest years are due to the length of the patent procedure and not necessarily due to a lower patent activity.

Analysis of indicator is presented in Eurostat's annual monitoring report on Sustainable development in the EU (progress towards SDGs in the EU context).

See table  sdg_09_40

Eurostat dedicated section on SDGs: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/sdi/overview

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