The European Patent Office (EPO) received nearly 166,000 patent applications in 2017, 3.9% more than the previous year and the highest figure reached to date.
Furthermore, in 2017 the EPO published more than 100,000 European patents for the first time in a single year – almost 106,000, 10.1% more than in 2016 – according to the Annual Report 2017 published by this organization.
The President of the EPO, Benoît Battistelli, stated that "the growing demand for European patents confirms Europe's attractiveness as a leading technology market."
The five countries that filed the most patents throughout 2017 in Europe were, in this order, United States, Germany, Japan, France, and China.
China experienced a growth of 16.6%, which allowed it to displace Switzerland from the fifth position in the ranking. European countries as a whole saw an increase of 2.8% in the number of patents filed, and accounted for 47% of the total patents applied for in 2017.
Japan grew again (3.5%) after several years of decline, and the United States also increased (5.8%) after the previous year's setback. In contrast, the number of patents filed by companies from South Korea decreased by 8.2% after two years of increase.
Spain ranked 16th, with a total of 1,676 patents filed, representing an increase of 7.4% compared to the previous year.
If we analyze the number of European patents filed based on the population of each country, we see that Switzerland comfortably leads this ranking with a total of 884.3 patents per million inhabitants. This figure is more than double that of the Netherlands, second in the ranking, with 412.2 patents per million inhabitants.
Spain ranks 27th in this ranking, with a total of 34.2 patents filed in 2017 per million inhabitants.