Patent applications in 2022 rise to 312 mainly in technology
In all, last year, Portuguese companies and inventors increased their patent applications for pharmaceuticals by 85.7%. Unicorn Feedzai and University of Aveiro led the number of applications.
Patent applications submitted to the European Patent Office (EPO) rose again for the second consecutive year, up 7.6% in 2022 to a total of 312, mainly in the areas of computer, medical and pharmaceutical technology, it was announced.
According to the Patent Index 2022, published on Monday by the EPO, the total number of patent applications submitted by Portuguese companies and inventors increased by 7.6% in 2022 to a total of 312, the highest number to date and 40% above the amount registered five years ago.
This compares with a 15.5% increase in 2021, to 290, and the 2.5% increase in total patent applications to the EPO in 2022, to 193,460.
As in the previous year, in Portugal last year, computer technology was again the area with the most patent applications filed with the EPO, followed by medical and pharmaceutical technologies and making health the industry with the highest number of submissions.
In all, last year, Portuguese companies and inventors increased their patent applications for pharmaceuticals by 85.7%.
As for patent applicants from Portugal, Feedzai, a Portuguese company dedicated to artificial intelligence to prevent and detect payment fraud in financial institutions, was once again the leading entity to submit applications (20), along with the University of Aveiro (also 20), This was followed by Novadelta (13), NOS Inovação (nine), the University of Minho (eight), the University of Coimbra (seven), the New University of Lisbon (six), the João Lobo Antunes Institute of Molecular Medicine (five), the University of Porto (also five) and Altice Labs (four).
Among these 10 main applicants to the EPO, six are Portuguese universities or institutes.
In terms of regions, the North led the number of patent applications, with a 36.2% share of the total, closely followed by the Centre region with a 33.3% share. Lisbon, in turn, had the strongest growth (+38.6%), contributing to 25.3% of the total number of Portuguese applications.
Overall, in 2022, the top five countries of origin for patent applications at the EPO were the United States (equating to a quarter of the total), Germany, Japan, China and France.
The application growth recorded in the past year was still mainly fuelled by submissions from China (+15.1% compared to 2021), which have more than doubled in the past five years, as well as, albeit to a lesser extent, US applications (+2.9%) and those from the Republic of Korea (+10.0%).
Chinese manufacturer Huawei, which had already been the leading applicant, was again the leader in 2022 (with 4,505 submissions), followed by Korea’s LG (3,510), the US’s Qualcomm (2. 966), Korean Samsung (2,874), Swedish Ericsson (1,827), German Siemens (1,735), US-based Raytheon Technologies (1,539), German BASF (1,401), Royal Philips (1,338) and Japanese Sony (1,329).
