Every year, the European Patent Office (EPO) publishes a report that provides information on data and analysis on patent applications and granted patents across Europe for the previous year.
What is the European Patent Office Patent Index?
The European Patent Index (EPI) report focuses on understanding innovation trends, technology fields and geographic distribution in Europe. This year we saw an increase in computer technology, transport and biotechnology patent applications in 2024.
In addition, the EPI patent data provides information that can help businesses make informed decisions about product development, portfolio management, and filing strategies. Businesses can further understand the present patent landscape and identify potential partners or acquisition targets.
Overall trends identified in the 2024 European Patent Index
The EPI monitors the growth and decline in the filing activity of each technical field and will draw a comparison to the previous year. This is important as it will show any trend shifts in the activity of Research and Development in specific sectors.
There’s been a gradual increase in patent activity in 2021 and 2022, and 2023. Due to economic challenges overall the 2024 EPI showed a small decline (-0.1%) in European patent applications received by the EPO. The number of direct European applications and international Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applications for 2024 was 199,452, compared to 193,627 in 2023. Despite this, applicants from the 39 EPO member states filed more patent applications than the previous year (up by 0.3%).
The EPI 2024 identified that the European patent applications in 2024 remained high but the shift in innovation has moved away from medical technology and pharmaceutical applications, perhaps due to a plateau in patent applications arising from the Covid-19 pandemic (In 2020, patent applications increased by 10.2% in pharmaceuticals), to the computer technology and electrical machinery fields, supporting the surge in AI and clean energy, respectively.
How did the UK perform in 2024?
Overall, since last year, the UK has an increase in patent applications and grants (6,076 total compared to 5,895 total in 2023) and growth has increased by 3.1% share of filing. This growth is the third highest growth globally and the second highest in Europe.
British American Tobacco PLC, followed closely by Unilever PLC were the top two applicants from the UK in 2024 with a total of 636 and 613 total number of patent applications, respectively. In addition, the top technology field for share of filing were other consumer goods with an increase by 71.7% since last year. This is largely due to an increase in patents related to vaping technologies.
Key points in the EPO’s Patent Index for 2024
- Technology fields. There was a surge in AI-related inventions and battery technologies; Computer technology (+3.3%), which includes machine learning and pattern recognition, electrical machinery, apparatus and energy, (+8.9%) which includes clean energy inventions and battery technologies, transport (+3.5%) and biotechnology (+5.4%) all had significant growth in patent filings whilst medical technology (-3.0%) and digital communication (-6.3%) saw a decline in growth.
- Top applicants. Samsung, followed by Huawei and LG were the highest applicants in 2024
- Women inventors. 25% of all applications filed from applicants based in one of the EPO’s 39 member states named at least one women as an inventor, a small decline from 2023. There is still more to be done to encourage women in careers in science and engineering.
- Geographic origin. Filings from European applicants remained high (43.3% of the total share). The highest percentage of patent filings from European applicants were from Germany (12.6%) with the top five countries being from
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- United States (-0.8%) accounting for almost a quarter of all applications
- Germany (+0.4%)
- Japan (-2.4%)
- P.R. China (+0.5%)
- R. Korea (+4.2%)
