More Patent Applications in Europe Than Ever

The European Patent Office (EPO) received 235 000 European patent filings in 2010, up 11 % from 2009, marking the highest number ever in the Office’s 34-year history. Some 39 % of these filings originated from the 38 member states of the European Patent Organisation, 26 % from the US, 18 % from Japan and 5 % from each of China and South Korea.

According to EPO President Benoît Battistelli in 2010 there was an increase in demand for patent protection from every region of the world. After a two-year slump, the EU and US are nearly back to their levels of patenting of before the crisis. This combined with a massive rise in patent applications from Asia ─ led by China ─ has made 2010 a record year at the EPO.

Country and Region

With 92,500 or 39 % of the total patent filings received by the EPO coming from the Organisation’s 38 member states (EU 27: 82,800), the share in filings of the Europeans in their own market dropped slightly below the level of the previous year (2009: 41 % / EU: 35 %).

Germany once again clearly topped the table with 14 % (33,100 applications; +8.5 % over 2009), followed by France with 5 % (11,700; +1 %), and Switzerland, the UK and the Netherlands with approximately 3 % each.

With much smaller volumes, strong growth rates were noted for Belgium (+19 %), Austria (+14%), Spain (+8.5%), and also for countries such as Luxembourg (+27 %), Poland (+22 %), Slovakia (+30 %) and Estonia (+23 %).

Among non-European countries, the US and Japan were by far the largest countries of origin of European patent applications, with the US accounting for 26 % (61,000 filings, +12 %) of the total and Japan for 18 % (42,000; +10%), whilst China and South Korea each accounted for 5 %. There was an impressive growth in applications from South Korea (12,000; +21 %) and especially China (13,000; +54 %), which overtook Korea in number of applications.

Company and Field
Three European companies, Siemens (2,135 applications), Philips (1,765 applications) and BASF (1,707 applications) are topping the list of most prolific applicants in 2010. The strong position of European industry in the EPO league table is underlined by the fact that out of the top 50 applicants, 21 are from Europe, followed by 16 from Asia, 12 from the US and one from Canada.

All of the major technical fields saw a growth in EPO patent application filing in 2010. Medical technology led the pack with 10,500 applications, followed by computer technology (8,300 applications) and electrical machinery, apparatus and energy (8,200).

The strongest growth rates were noted for biotechnology (7,400 applications; +42.6 %), pharmaceuticals (6,700; +20 %) and digital communication (8,000; +11.2 %). The areas of telecommunications, transport and computers have not yet reached their 2008 (pre-crisis) levels.