Increase in proportion of European patent applications filed by universities

The EPO’s Observatory on Patents and Technology, in collaboration with the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (Fraunhofer ISI), have published a study which used data gathered from over 1200 universities to demonstrate that there has been a 4% increase in the percentage of patent applications filed by European universities over a period of twenty years.

In addition to this general increase, it was also found that the number of direct academic patent application (i.e. those owned by the universities themselves, rather than by another party) has increased by 25% between 2000 and 2019.

However, it was noted that half of these patent applications filed at the EPO originated from only 5% of universities.

Other findings from the study included the fact that whilst larger countries (e.g., France, Germany, the UK and Italy) tended to file more academic patent applications overall, countries with a smaller total number of patent applications often filed comparatively higher proportions of academic patent applications.

It was also noted that whilst there was a high degree of cooperation between universities and other parties (academic patent applications were often filed with another company acting as a co-applicant with a university), this mostly remained within the same country, meaning that there was very little cooperation between different countries.

The importance of patents to universities was explained by the EPO President, António Campinos, who stated that: “By leveraging patents though licensing, collaboration or spin-outs, universities can amplify their impact, driving both market and social value”.

A link to the EPO’s article can be found here.