National patent indicators - Issue number 2/2006 - Products Statistics in Focus

The total number of patent applications to the European Patent Office (EPO) of the EU-25 in 2002 are with 59 756 higher compared to the applications of the United States and Japan. On the other hand, the patent granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office(USPTO) in 1999 are much higher for the United States compared to EU-25 and Japan. Beside the general data on patent applications to the EPO and patents granted by the USPTO, the publication also contains a number of additional ratios and a breakdown of this data in accordance to the International Patent Classification.