By Donald Zuhn —

On Tuesday, the European Patent Office announced that it received 243,000 applications in 2011, which constituted a 3% increase from the 237,500 applications the EPO received in 2010.  The EPO granted 62,115 patents, which was 7% more than the number of patent grants in 2010.  With regard to the geographic origin of filings, the EPO noted that EP filings from China rose from 5% of all filings to 7%, filings from Japan rose from 18% of all filings to 19%, and filings from the U.S. fell from 26% of all filings to 24%.  The Top 10 countries of origin for European filings were:

A more complete list of filings by country of origin can be found here.

EPO President Benoît Battistelli stated that "[c]ontinued patent filings growth and the high percentage of non-European applicants are clear evidence of great confidence in Europe as a place for business," adding that "[t]he EPO will continue to play a leading role in the global patent system."

Earlier this month, IFI Claims Patent Services, a company that produces global patent databases, announced that 224,505 utility patents were issued in the U.S. last year, an increase of 2% over the 219,614 patents that were issued in 2010.  IFI also released a list of the Top 50 companies receiving U.S. patents last year.  IFI's Top 10 were:

The only life sciences company making the list was Du Pont de Nemours, E I & Co.  IFI noted that Asian companies accounted for 25 of the top 50 U.S. patent recipients, with U.S. firms capturing 17 slots.

Last month, Reuters reported that China surpassed the U.S. in terms of application filings in 2010 (figures for 2011 were not yet available).  Citing a Thomson Reuters research report, the article noted that published applications in China had risen by an average of 16.7% annually from 171,000 in 2006 to 314,000 in 2010.  According to the report, published applications are expected to top 500,000 in 2015, with filings in the U.S. and Japan amounting to 400,000 and 300,000, respectively.

In December, the World Intellectual Property Organization announced the release of its 2011 World Intellectual Property Indicators report.  The WIPO report noted that after a considerable decline in worldwide patent application filings in 2009 (a 3.6% decline), filings rose 7.2% in 2010, with China and the U.S. accounting for the greatest share of all filings.  The 7.2% increase constituted the highest growth rate in five years, and the 1.98 million worldwide applications that were filed in 2010 was an all-time high.  The report noted that some 5.17 million worldwide applications were "potentially pending" in 2010.

The WIPO report showed that the U.S. maintained the top spot for patent application filings, with 490,226, and that China slipped past Japan to capture second place with 391,177 filings.  Japan had 344,598 filings.  With regard to technology field, biotechnology filings rose 0.4% between 2005 and 2009 (the latest years for which data was available), pharmaceutical filings were down 0.1%, organic fine chemistry was down 1.3%.