Summary of the EPO Annual Report 2001 Sustained filings growth at the European Patent Office

Munich 28. 6. 2002 (PROTEXT/ots) - The volume of applicationsfiled with the European Patent Office (EPO) rose again in 2001.Its 158 200 filings comfortably beat the previous year's mark of143 000. Applicants from Japan, the USA and Germany registeredthe biggest increase over 2000. In terms of technical fields, thehighest scorers were electronic communications, medicaltechnology and electrical components.

26% more patents granted

Despite the marked increase, the pace of growth slowed alittle compared to the previous year. As EPO President IngoKober announced when presenting the Annual Report 2001, at 9%the growth rate failed by some way to match the 15.7% rise in2000. On the other hand, the EPO granted 34 700 patents, 26% morethan the year before (2000: 27 500). The largest numbers ofEuropean patents went to US applicants (8 600), followed byGermany (8 100), Japan (6 600) and France (2 800).

Given the continued rise in filings, even though the EPOboosted productivity by 4.3% over the previous year (2000:+1.7%), there was no reduction in work levels. As a result theOffice took further action to master its workload, among otherthings by recruiting more patent examiners. At the end of 2001 ithad a staff of around 5 100, over 3 000 of them examiners.

Preference for the Euro-PCT route

The international route under the Patent Cooperation Treaty(PCT) was once again the preferred approach to filing, with 64%of applications (2000: 62%) reaching the EPO by that path. 48.8%of applications (0.6 percentage points down) came from the 20countries in the European Patent Organisation, 27.7% (- 0.6) fromthe USA and 18% from Japan (+1.1). Applications from Japanexperienced the biggest rise (19 800; +2 700 filings), followedby the USA (30 450; +1 950) and Germany (21 300; +1 200).Applicants were also considerably more active in theNetherlands, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Finland and Switzerland.

More high-tech applications filed with the EPO

Some 54% of applications (2000: 52.4%) came from tentechnical fields with particularly high levels of patentactivity. Once again, the leader of the pack was electroniccommunications (10 800 applications), followed by medicaltechnology (10 200) and electrical components (7 600). However,the highest growth rate registered by the EPO was in dataprocessing, which rose by 25% to 6 300 applications.Biochemistry/genetic engineering was up nearly 19% with 4 200applications, the main factor here being the sharp rise inapplications from EPO member states (+350), which were moreproductive than the USA for the first time since 1997.

In other high-tech fields such as aviation, lasers andsemiconductors, European applicants likewise strengthened theirposition compared to non- Europeans, producing 40% of theapplications filed (2000: 38%). However, the proportion suchapplications constituted relative to overall filings from EPOstates was, at 19%, considerably lower than among applicationsfrom Japan (26.5%) and the USA (28.5%). Overall, 23.2% (2000:21.8%) of all European patent applications related to the high-tech sector. ots Original Text Service: European Patent Office(EPO) Internet: http://www.presseportal.de Further informationavailable from: Rainer Osterwalder, EPO Press Officer,Erhardtstr. 27, D-80331 Munich Phone: +4989/23995012 Fax:+4989/23992850 e-mail: rosterwalder@epo.org

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