On 25 March 2025, the Munich-based European Patent Office (EPO), which employs 6300 people, published its patent statistics for 2024. Patent Index 2024: European innovation remains robust amid global economic uncertainties.
Unfortunately, even after studying the press release and the “Patent Index 2024” on which it is based, it is not possible to know what makes European innovation strong, or even “robust”, but at least the 2024 figures have been published and are worth drawing attention to – and which unfortunately are in apparent contradiction with the title of the press release.
“The United States maintained its position as the top country of origin for European patent applications, followed by Germany, Japan, China, and the Republic of Korea. EPO member states accounted for 43% of filings, while 57% came from outside Europe. Notably, R. Korea saw the strongest growth (+4.2%), China saw a 0.5% increase, while companies and inventors from the US (-0.8%) and Japan (-2.4%) filed fewer applications. Patent applications from the 39 EPO member states were up +0.3%, boosted by growth from Switzerland (+3.2%) and the UK (+3.1%), while filings from the EU 27 member states were down -0.4%. Germany (+0.4%) and France (+1.1%), Europe’s top two filing countries, were up slightly in 2024. Switzerland remained the lead country in patents per capita, followed by several Nordic countries.” Hungary had 139 applications, Austria had 2146, Slovakia 62, Romania 63, Serbia 20, Croatia 41, Slovenia 156, Czech Republic 252, Poland 692.
In 2024, 22% of patent applications filed with the EPO from Europe will come from individual inventors or SMEs (companies with fewer than 250 employees), 71% from large companies and 7% from universities and public research institutes.
If we analyze not only the EPO statistics, but also those of WIPO ( World Intellectual Property Organisation), we can see that in 2023 (WIPO has not yet published its 2024 statistics), the EPO received only 5.6% of patent applications. In contrast, the National Intellectual Property Office of the People’s Republic of China (CNIPA) received 1.68 million patent applications in 2023, which represents 47.2% of the 3.55 million patent applications worldwide in 2023. The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is in second place with 598 085 applications, followed by the Japan Patent Office (JPO) (300133), the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) (243 310) and the European Patent Office (EPO) (199 429). The CNIPA’s share of patent applications increased from 32.2% in 2013 to 47.2% in 2023. In 2023, patent offices in Asia received around 68.7% of patent applications filed worldwide, an increase of 10.3 percentage points compared to a decade earlier in 2013.
Chinese innovators filed around 1.64 million patent applications worldwide in 2023. China is followed by the US (518 364), Japan (414 413), the Republic of Korea (287 954) and Germany (133 053). Noteworthy is India, which now has the 6th highest number of filers, with a 15.7% increase in one year.
Unfortunately, neither the EPO nor the WIPO figures above are evidence of “strong” or “robust” European innovation, but rather the opposite. What is positive and encouraging is that Finland, Sweden and Denmark have seen a significant increase in the number of patents per million people over the last decade, in contrast to Germany, where the number has fallen significantly.
Opening image source: European Patent Office, Patent Index 2024
