Last week, EPO (European Patent Office) has published its annual report 2014 where the latest trends on patents activity are presented.
2014 has been a very positive year for the EPO. Besides the increase in filings, EPO have been certified ISO 9001 being the first office among the IP5 (the five biggest offices in the world) to obtain this certification for the whole granting process.
Before digging into numbers and analyzing deeply the applications trend (we will do it in another post), we would like to present the data provided through the following EPO’s short video on annual report 2014:
As we could see, good news is that total European Patent filings in 2014 have grown steadily from the past 5 years (i.e considering the period 2010-2014), with an increase of 3,1% in 2014 reaching the record number of 274.174 patent filing.
The main conclusions from the video:
- Origin of European patent filings in 2014: in terms of volume, European companies filed more than a third of all patent applications (35% vs 26% from USA, for example, and 18% from Japan).
- Patent filings from European countries increase by 1,2%. China showed the biggest increase: +18,2% while Japan dropped by – 4,4%.
- Among the EU countries: France, UK and the Netherland showed strong growths, while Swiss and German companies filed fewer patent applications.
We are not going to reveal all the datas, hoping you could enjoy and draw useful conclusions from the video developed by the EPO.
From Protectia, we will certainly follow closely all the trends regarding innovation translating into the amount of patent applications both in EU and worldwide.
