Archive:Patent statistics

Data from April 2014. Most recent data: Further Eurostat information, Main tables and Database. Planned article update: June 2015.

Table 1: Patent applications to the EPO, 2005 and 2011 (1) - Source: Eurostat (pat_ep_ntot)

Figure 1: Top 30 metropolitan areas in terms of total patent applications to the EPO, 2010 (1)
(number) - Source: Eurostat (pat_ep_rtot) and (pat_ep_rtec)

Table 2: Patent applications to the EPO, 2010 (1)
(number) - Source: Eurostat (pat_ep_nnano), (pat_ep_nbio), (pat_ep_ntec), (pat_ep_nict), (pat_ep_nrns) and (pat_ep_ntot)

Figure 2: Number of patent applications to the EPO for energy technologies, EU-28, 2010 (1)
(number) - Source: Eurostat (pat_ep_nrg)

This article provides information on patent applications in the European Union (EU). Patents reflect inventive activity and they also show the capacity to exploit knowledge and translate it into potential economic gains. In this context, indicators based on patent statistics are widely used to assess the inventive performance of countries or regions. The grounds for the assumption that a patent represents a codification of inventive activity rely on the novelty, utility and inventiveness that an invention requires to be patented. On the basis of this assumption, Eurostat collects patent statistics to build up indicators of research and development (R & D) output.

Main statistical findings

The number of patent applications to the European Patent Office (EPO) from EU-28 Member States reached 54 005 in 2011, a fall of 2 934 compared with 2005, or a reduction of 5.2 % in relative terms, equivalent to -0.9 % per year.

Analysis of patent applications from EU Member States and non-member countries

Among the EU Member States, Germany had by far the highest number of patent applications to the EPO in 2011, some 22 257 (41.2 % of the EU-28 total), followed by France (8 615), the United Kingdom (4 966), Italy (3 865) and the Netherlands (3 239). From non-member countries, the highest numbers of patent applications were recorded from the United States (26 064) and Japan (17 896), followed by China (5 283) and South Korea (4 527). Relative to its population, Germany also reported the highest number of patent applications, some 272 per million inhabitants, followed by Sweden (260) and Finland (243).

Between 2005 and 2011 the number of patent applications filed at the EPO fell in 15 of the EU Member States, the largest contractions, in relative terms, being recorded for Croatia (-54.4 %), Bulgaria (-52.0 %) and Luxembourg (-46.3 %) and the largest, in absolute terms, for Germany (-1 698), Italy (-1 039) and the United Kingdom (-668). The increases recorded for the remaining 11 Member States (no recent data available for Cyprus or Malta) were highest, in absolute terms, for Spain, Poland and France (see Table 1), while in relative terms the largest increases were for Estonia, Poland and the Czech Republic.

Analysis for the top 30 metropolitan areas in the EU

Eurostat recently started to compile patent applications data by metropolitan areas, in other words a geographical analysis based on data for one or more NUTS level 3 regions. Seen from this different angle, unsurprisingly many capital city areas appear near the top of the ranking (see Figure 1), for example Paris, Berlin, London, Stockholm, Bruxelles / Brussel, Helsinki, København and Wien. The top 30 includes 15 German metropolitan areas, with 6 of these in the top 10. In France, the traditionally high concentration of research centres in the metropolitan area of Paris is reflected through the 1 333 patent applications that were registered here, the highest among all metropolitan areas of the EU; two other French metropolitan areas, Grenoble and Lyon, appeared in the top 30. Equally, three Swedish metropolitan areas ranked in the top 30, namely Stockholm, Malmö and Göteborg. High-technology patent applications represented 49.2 % of the total patent applications in Malmö, the highest share recorded for any of the top 30 metropolitan areas. In 14 of the other top 30 metropolitan areas the share of high-technology patent applications ranged between 20 % and 40 %. By contrast, Torino (Italy) reported only 3.6 % of high-technology patent applications.

Selected types of patents

Patent applications for information and communication technologies (ICT) represented 12.8 % of all patent applications to the EPO in 2010, while high-technology patent applications accounted for 8.5 % — see Table 2. The relative importance of patent applications for ICT declined over time, as did their absolute number, from 16 205 in 2000 to 7 007 in 2010. The number of high-technology patent applications followed a similar development, from 11 952 in 2000 to 4 663 in 2010. This considerable and continued reduction in patent applications filed with the EPO for ICT and high-technology may reflect a number of factors, including the length of patent procedures.

ICT patent applications to the EPO were relatively concentrated in a small group of EU Member States. The highest numbers of ICT patent applications were recorded in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Italy and Sweden, collectively filing 85.1 % of ICT patent applications made from the EU-28.

Biotechnology is a growing discipline with a strong market. This growth is also reflected in the number of biotechnology patents. For several years, biotechnological inventions have consistently ranked among the 10 largest technical fields in terms of patent applications filed with the EPO. Nevertheless, in 2010, only 1.5 % of all patent applications were related to biotechnology inventions.

Among the emerging technologies, nanotechnology is one of the most prominent examples, and there are high expectations for the application of nanotechnologies in a wide range of areas affecting daily life. Nanotechnology can be present in almost any area of science and engineering: it is just as relevant to biotechnologists and physicists as it is to electrical and mechanical engineers or materials scientists. Based on the number of patent applications to the EPO in 2010, nanotechnology was a field of research still in its infancy and therefore small in terms of patenting. Nevertheless, the EU accounted for 44.7 % of all nanotechnology patent applications to the EPO, followed by the United States (21.2 %) and Japan (18.9 %).

Patent applications for energy technologies

Figure 2 offers an overview of the number of patent applications in 2010 from within the EU-28 to the EPO concerning energy technologies. The strong predominance of patents related to wind energy, photovoltaic energy and solar thermal energy is particularly notable, underlining the interest in harnessing energy from renewable sources.

Data sources and availability

Since 2007, Eurostat’s production of data on patents has been based almost exclusively on the EPO’s worldwide statistical patent database (PATSTAT). The EPO grants European patents for the 38 contracting states to the European Patent Convention (or Munich Convention): the EU Member States, the EFTA Member States, some candidate countries (the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey), as well as Albania, Monaco and San Marino.

European patent applications refer to applications filed directly under the EPC or to applications filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) and designated to the EPO (Euro-PCT). Patents data are classified in accordance with the international patents classification of applications (IPC). Patent applications are counted according to the year in which they are filed and are assigned to a country according to the inventor’s place of residence, using fractional counting if there are multiple inventors for a single patent. They can be presented at a national or regional level; for the latter the data are aggregated by linking postcodes and/or place names to NUTS level 2 and 3 regions.

High-technology patents are counted following criteria established by the trilateral statistical report (drafted by the EPO, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the Japan Patent Office (JPO)), where the following technical fields are defined as high-technology groups in accordance with the international patent classification (IPC): computer and automated business equipment; micro-organism and genetic engineering; aviation; communication technology; semiconductors; and lasers.

Due to legal rules imposed by the patent application process, information on patent applications is disclosed to the public 18 months or more after the priority date. As a result, the delay before indicators can be compiled can extend to more than five years depending on the computational method used to develop indicators. In order to overcome this issue, nowcasting methods have been developed.

Context

A patent is a legal title of industrial property granting its owner the exclusive right to exploit an invention commercially for a limited area and time. The patent confers on its owner the right to stop others from, among other things, copying, using or selling such invention without authorisation. In return for the exclusive right to exploit it, the technical details of the invention are published. Patentability requires novelty, inventiveness and industrial applicability of the invention.

Patents, as a legal instrument to protect invention, are strongly influenced by the legal system that surrounds them. The European patent framework, in particular, is rather complex, since national systems co-exist with the European patent, and a third system, the unitary patent.

The unitary patent — or ‘European patent with unitary effect’ — is a European patent, granted by the EPO under the rules and procedures of the EPC, to which, upon request of the patent proprietor, unitary effect is given for the territory of the 25 EU Member States participating in the unitary patent scheme.

Patent proprietors will in the future be able to choose between various combinations of classical European patents and unitary patents, for example:

a unitary patent for the 25 Member States of the EU which participate in the unitary patent scheme;

together with

a classical European patent taking effect in one or more EPC Contracting States which do not participate in the scheme, such as Spain, Croatia, Italy, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland or Turkey.

Technological change and innovation have become two main areas of economic analysis in industrialised countries, as they are determining factors for productivity and competitiveness. Science and technology activities are crucial for fostering technical innovation, and therefore there is an increasing interest for describing science and technology activities in both quantitative and qualitative terms. In this context, science and technology activities are mainly measured by using indirect input, output and impact indicators: patent data are used in the context of output indicators. In particular, indicators based on patents can be interesting for assessing the performance of application-oriented types of research and development, although patents do not cover all kinds of innovation activity. As such, patent indicators are often complemented with other science and technology indicators, so as to obtain a complete view of innovation activities.

Further Eurostat information

Publications

Main tables

Science and technology, see:

Intellectual property rights (t_ipr)

Patent (t_pat)

Patent applications to the European Patent Office (EPO) by priority year (tsc00009)

High-tech patent applications to the European Patent Office (EPO) by priority (tsc00010)

Patent applications to the European Patent Office (EPO) by priority year by NUTS 2 regions (tgs00040)

High-tech patent applications to the European Patent Office (EPO) by priority year by NUTS 2 regions (tgs00041)

Patents granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) by priority year (tsc00033)

Database

Science and technology, see:

Intellectual property rights (ipr)

Patent (pat)

Patent applications to the European Patent Office (EPO) by priority year (pat_epo)

Patents granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) by priority year (pat_uspto)

Triadic patent families by earliest priority year at the national level (pat_triadic)

Methodology / Metadata

Patent statistics (ESMS metadata file — pat_esms)

Source data for tables and figures (MS Excel)

Patent statistics: tables and figures

Other information

External links

European Patent Office (EPO) — Statistics

PATSTAT — the EPO Worldwide Patent Statistical Database (Information flyer)

Innovation Union Information and Intelligence System (I3S)

European Commission — I3S — Commitments types — Commitment 14

OECD Patent Statistics Manual