Spanish companies and inventors filed 1,925 patent applications with the European Patent Office (EPO) in 2022, the second highest figure in history and slightly lower by 1% than the 2021 record, in which 1,945 patents were written, 8.4% more than the previous year. According to the 2022 Patent Index of the European Patent Office (EPO), Spain ranks tenth among EU countries in terms of European patent applications.
In Spain, the technological field with the most patent applications was once again pharmaceuticals, although it experienced a drop of 4.2% compared to the previous year. Medical technology and biotechnology rose in second and third place, growing by +11.0% and +9.3% respectively. Overall, the field of electrical machinery, appliances and energy (-12.0%) fell to fourth place. Health technologies, which include pharmaceuticals, medical technologies and biotechnology, account for about a quarter of all patent applications filed by Spain with the EPO.
Among the sectors in which patent applications from Spain have grown the most, although with a smaller share, are environmental technologies (+82.1%), information technologies (+35.0%) and measurement systems (+31.7%).
The Superior Council of Scientific Research (CSIC) is again the main applicant for Spanish patents at the EPO. Of the ten largest applicants in Spain, six were universities or research centers. The list is as follows: CSIC, Technological Research & Innovation Foundation, Polytechnic University of Valencia, Autonomous University of Barcelona, National University of the Netherlands and University of Barcelona.
Catalonia by Autonomous Communities had the largest share of applications with 31.4%, despite the fact that applications decreased by 7.4% compared to the previous year. Madrid was the second community with a share of 21.3% (with 9% more applications). Together, Catalonia and Madrid represented more than 50% of the total number of Spanish patent applications at the EPO in 2022. Among the regions with more than 100 applications in the EPO, the largest increases were observed in Navarre (+14.3%) and Basque Country (+13.8%).
In total, the EPO received a total of 193,460 applications in 2022, representing an increase of 2.5% over the year. The United States, Germany, Japan, China and France are the five main countries that contributed the most applications to this list. Chinese applications grew by +15.1% in 2022 to 2021, doubling in the last five years.
Germany, the main European country in terms of patent applications, fell 4.7% compared to 2021, while there was an increase from France (+1.9%), Switzerland (+5.9%), Belgium (+5.0%) and the Netherlands. (+3.5%). In terms of patent applications per capita, Switzerland was again the leader, followed by some of the Nordic countries.
The Chinese telecommunications company Huawei is the main patent application to the EPO in 2022 (as in 2021), followed by LG, from South Korea, Qualcomm, from the United States, Samsung and Ericsson, which is the European company with the largest applications. .
