According to the European Patent Office, the institution responsible for the protection of inventions, Chinese companies have made a real breakthrough.
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Another area where the “after” world, which was to emerge after the pandemic and the awareness of Europe’s vulnerability against China, will have been long fire: that of innovation and Patent deposits. After a 2020 year in slight decline, the European Patent Office, the European public institution that protects inventions in 44 countries, representing 700 million people, has received a historically high number of records. No less than 188,600 patent applications have been filed in 2021, a figure up 4.5% compared to the previous year. A number largely carried by the digital communication, medical and computer technology sectors.
These patent applications mainly come from five countries: the United States, Germany, Japan, China and France. But, notable, China operates a dazzling progression in this ranking. It represents 9% of deposits, a part multiplied by four over the last ten years. And between 2020 and 2021, the number of files filed by the Chinese companies with the EPO increased by 24%, to compare with the more moderate increase of only 5.2% of files from US companies.
France set back
The Chinese Huawei remains, as in 2019, the company that holds the largest number of requests, followed by the Koreans Samsung (already in the lead in 2020) and LG. The first European company arrives in fourth row: it is the Swedish Ericsson. “In relative terms, the share of patents from European countries continues to fall, notes the EPO, from 50% of the total in 2013 to 44% in 2021.”
In this ranking, France is a little behind. The number of requests for hexagonal enterprises fell by 0.7% in 2021, to 10,537 requests, twice as much as Germany, the first European country with 25,969 files filed. In 2020, the EPO recalls, “French innovation was an exception to the slowdown in many European countries, with an increase in requests of 3.7%.” For France, the first applicant is the Safran aircraft engine specialist, before the Atomic Energy and Alternative Energy Commission (CEA) and the Valeo automotive equipment manufacturer.