The EPO, the European Patent Office, recently published the EPO Patent Index 2024, a collection of statistics that describes and captures the trend of patent applications filed with the EPO in 2024.
The report reveals very interesting data, both in terms of the countries of origin of the applications and the sectors and trends that emerged in the last year.
Nearly 200,000 Patent Applications Filed
The first piece of data reported concerns the total number of patent applications filed with the EPO. In 2024, the EPO received 199,264 applications, in line with the results of 2023 (-0.1%).
The top five countries of origin for the number of patent applications filed are:
- United States of America, with 24% of all patent applications received by the EPO.
- Germany, with 12.6%
- Japan, with 10.6%
- China, with 10.1%
- South Korea, with 6.6%.
Furthermore, South Korea showed the largest growth in the number of applications filed, with an increase of 4.2% compared to 2023.
Among the European countries, Germany confirms its position as the leading European country for patent applications filed, followed by France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Italy with 2.4% of the total patent applications received by the EPO.
Overall, applications from European applicants represent 43.3% of the applications received by the EPO in 2024.
Focus on Italy
Italy remains among the top 5 European countries for the number of patent applications filed with the EPO, but it recorded a sharp decrease compared to the previous year (-4.5%).
Going into detail about the Italian regions, Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna, and Veneto remain in the top three positions in Italy, representing more than 60% of the applications filed by Italian entities with the EPO. Tuscany recorded a growth of 14.5% compared to the previous year, thus positioning itself in fifth place with 316 applications, followed by Lazio with 263 patent applications filed.
Also in 2024, Coesia, Ferrari, and Iveco Group are the top three Italian companies for number of European patent applications filed.
Computer Technology in First Place Among Technological Sectors
Another very interesting aspect of the Patent Index 2024 concerns the sectors.
The sector that saw the highest number of patent applications was computer technology, with 16,815 applications, an increase of 3.3% compared to 2023, thus taking the top position.
In second place is the electrical machinery sector, with 16,142 patent applications, a significant increase compared to 2023 (+8.9% of applications received). In third place, registering an important decrease compared to 2023 (-6.3%), is the digital communication sector.
The growth of computer technology is certainly not a surprise, considering that this sector includes inventions related to AI, which has been undergoing a period of great evolution in recent years.
Patent applications in the field of computer technology, as the report shows, mainly come from the United States, China, and Germany.
The data therefore confirms a gap between the USA and Europe in this area, as applications from European entities are collectively 29.5% compared to 34.4% from US entities. Despite this, many European countries have recorded growth in the number of patent applications filed in this sector, which represents an encouraging sign of European inventive activity.
As the EPO emphasizes, in the last 5 years, inventions in image and video recognition, pattern recognition, machine learning, and neural networks have particularly driven growth in the computer technology sector.
In particular, in 2024, inventions related to AI grew by 10.6% compared to the previous year, with more than half of these related to the area of computing devices based on biological models, which includes artificial neural networks.
Conclusions
In conclusion, the data provided by the report shows a global demand for European patents that remains at a high level, an indicator of the importance of European markets for inventions in various sectors, from electrical machinery to artificial intelligence.
The EPO president, António Campinos summarizes in the EPO press release:
“The EPO’s patent data is a clear roadmap for industry, policy, and investment priorities. As the Draghi and Letta reports warn, to stay competitive globally, Europe must enhance its innovation ecosystem and do more to help inventors scale up and commercialise their inventions, especially in critical areas such as green technologies, AI and semiconductors.”
Giulia Tibo