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With patent applications on the rise, European Patent Office puts quality before quantity
Munich , 1 April 2008 According to statistics published by the European Patent Office (EPO), the number of European patent applications has continued to increase, but the EPO has granted fewer patents. In 2007, the EPO received a record total of around 218 200 patent filings, compared with 210 600 the previous year. On the other hand, the 54 700 European patents granted in 2007 represented a decrease of 12.9% over the previous year when 62 800 granted patents were published.
Alison Brimelow, President of the EPO, considers that priority has to be given to patent quality: "The purpose of patents is to support the generation of economic benefits for society. However, large patent numbers are not necessarily indicative of growing R&D activity. What we therefore need is not more patents, but more good patents. The EPO aims to make sure that the patents it grants are relevant. The lower number of patents published in 2007 reflects this priority and is a step in the right direction. Putting the emphasis on quality over quantity in the granting of European patents is a key strategy for safeguarding the proper functioning of the European patent system. At the same time, it allows the EPO to continue to set the global benchmark in patenting."
The top filers with the EPO in 2007
The EPO launched new grant proceedings for 140 700 patent applications in 2007 - a 3.9% increase over the previous year (2006: 135 400). The proportion of applications originating from the 32 member states of the European Patent Organisation remained almost stable at 48.5%, following a decrease of 1% to 48.6% in 2006. Germany once again topped the table with 17.9% of the total (25 176 applications), followed by France with 5.9% (8 328) and the Netherlands with 5% (6 999).
Compared with 2006, filings from most countries continued to rise, those from Finland by 22% (2 045), from Spain by 16.5% (1 283), from Denmark by 13% (1 408) and from Sweden by 7.3% (2 733).
Although, of course, the actual number of applications is relatively low, filing activity also increased significantly in the smaller European states such as Liechtenstein, which rose by 41.9% (237 applications), Slovenia by 27.8% (115) and Luxembourg by 23.6% (251).
As for non-European countries, the USA and Japan maintained their dominant share of the total number of European patent applications in 2007, amounting to 25.3% (2006: 25.8%) and 16.3% (16.4%) respectively, whilst South Korea accounted for 3.5% (3.4%).
US companies filed 35 590 European patent applications (2006: 34 790, +2%), Japanese companies 22 890 (22 140, +3.4%) and South Korean companies 4 930 (4 590, +7.3%). With a total of 1 145 European filings, China sharply increased its number of applications by 59% and now ranks among the five most active non-European applicant countries.
Filings growth in a wide range of sectors
Filing activity was particularly strong in the fields of medical technology (12% of the total number of applications), electrical communications (10.2%) and computing (6.4%). The strongest growth rates were noted in the fields of engineering elements (+7.9% compared with 2006), electrical communications (+6.7%), medical technology (+6.3%) and organic chemistry (+6.2%). This contrasts with slower growth in vehicle technology (+0.3%) and fewer applications in computing (-0.8%) and information storage (-18.0%).
Download the annex (PDF, 27KB)
For more information, please contact:
Rainer
Osterwalder
Press Department, European Patent Office
D-80298 Munich
Tel.: +49 89/2399-1820
Fax: +49 89/2399-2850
Mobile: +49
163/8399-527
rosterwalder@epo.org