European Patent Office: Power Drivers and Digital Innovation

The energy transition and digital technology have pushed the number of patent applications in the European Union to a record high. However, there were again fewer registrations from Germany.

The energy transition and digital communications were the biggest drivers of innovation last year. This is reflected in patent statistics, as reported by the European Patent Office (EPO). Overall, the number of patent applications to the Munich-based authority rose 2.5% last year to a record 193,460.

The head of the European Patent Office, Antonio Campinos, said more patent protection applications have been filed, especially for clean energy technology and other processes for electricity generation, distribution and storage. “The continued recovery in this area is helping to drive the energy transition.” The EPA reports that the biggest growth in this area has been in battery technology, which has seen a real boom with an increase of 48 percent.

However, digital communications remains the leader in terms of annual filings, with 16,705 patents filed alone, up 11 percent from 2022.

German registrations continue to decline

In contrast, fewer patent applications came from Germany. That percentage fell 4.7% to 24,684 – the lowest level in more than a decade. “The proportion of German patent applications in the European Patent Office has fallen from 17.9 to 12.8 percent over the past ten years,” said Elga Roddick, an economist at the European Patent Office. The main reason is the shift between sectors. “There is particularly strong growth in the digital areas,” says Ruddick. “They don’t play such a big role in patent applications from Germany.” “On the other hand, patent applications are stagnating in areas that are strong in Germany, such as mechanical engineering and automotive technology.”

However, Germany is still second only to the United States (48,088). But China in particular, which is currently in fourth place after Japan, is catching up. “In 2013, there were 4,075 patent applications from China, and last year there were 19,041 patent applications,” said Roddick. Purely mathematically speaking, if this trend had continued, China could have at least caught up with Germany in three years.”

Front runner Huawei

With Huawei, the world’s most enthusiastic patent applicant has come from China again. The controversial telecom resource has filed 4,505 applications with the Environmental Protection Agency. It was followed by the Korean LG, ahead of the American chip company Qualcomm, which overtook Siemens. Munich Technology Group has registered 1,735 patents.

However, the sheer number of patent applications can be misleading. “One of the reasons for the large number of patents for some of the top applicants is that it is about mobile phone patents for 5G and 6G,” said Beat Weibel, head of the patent department at Siemens. “These patents are usually licensed in batches, and the more the company enters, the higher their share of the royalties,” he explained. “Accordingly, it is worth registering as many patents as possible there, and some are also small. This is not compatible with our approach.”

The European Patent Office is an organization independent of the European Union. Almost every country on the continent has joined. Only Russia, Belarus and Ukraine have independently organized patent protection.