Despite the debt crisis and economic uncertainty, companies have reversed the slow down in European patent filings in 2008-2009 and increased filings in the European Patent Office (EPO) to record levels in 2011.
The EPO allows an applicant to file a single patent application which designates up to 38 countries at the front of the process, and get national patents in one or more of the designated countries after the application is accepted by the examiner as patentable.
This EPO Annual report 2011 - Statistics and trends gives further details of total European patent filings in 2011, and the residence of applicants by EPO member states and by non-EPO member states.
The desire to defer the expense of the European patent filing is the reason for the increase in PCT filings and decrease in direct EP filings.
See the details in Patent requests in Europe reach record in 2011 - Japan Today.
Thanks to Alan Cooper for sending this article!
Copyright © 2012 Robert Moll. All rights reserved.