SAFRAN In a press release, the organization said it had registered 199,275 patent applications last year, up 2.9% year-on-year and accelerating on 2022's 2.5% increase.
This acceleration, driven by China (+8.8% vs. 2022) and South Korea (+21%), was marked by rising patent applications for inventions relating to clean energy technologies (+12.2% vs. 2022), and for the biotechnology sector (+5.9%).
Applications for computer technologies also rose sharply.
"The figures for 2023 confirm the change in direction taken by research and development efforts," explains EPO Chief Economist Yann Ménière.
"Patent applications in the transport sector, and in particular the traditional automotive sector, are stagnating, and are being shifted to green technologies, such as batteries - a sector in which China and South Korea are well placed".
Patent applications for batteries rose by 28% year-on-year.
Asked about the impact of high interest rates on innovation, the chief economist points out that research programs are not very sensitive to the economic cycle, as funding is committed over periods of several years.
"The risk is more in the financing of small companies and start-ups", as Yann Ménière points out, given that SMEs account for 23% of patent applications in Europe.
In this respect, the new unitary patent to be introduced in June 2023 could make it easier for SMEs to access intellectual property, while an EPO study carried out with the European Investment Bank shows that owning a patent increases the probability of a startup obtaining financing by up to ten times.
Since the launch of the system, unitary patent applications have accounted for 22.3% of patents granted by the EPO. For SMEs, this rate rises to 34%.
By 2023, the top five countries of origin of global patent applications to the EPO were the USA, with a quarter of the total, Germany, Japan, China and South Korea, which replaced France in fifth place.
The latter, Europe's second-largest applicant after Germany, accounted for 5.4% of EPO applications in 2023, down 0.2 points year-on-year. As in 2022, the top three companies filing the most patents were automotive equipment supplier Valeo, the French Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies Commission (CEA) and aerospace group Safran. (Written by Corentin Chappron, edited by Sophie Louet)
