Patents
14
IP review
spring
2017
Is the UK one of
the least inventive
countries?
A recent document published by
the European Patent Office (EPO)
includes a graph which claims
to be “measuring inventiveness”
of the world’s leading economies
using the ratio of European patent
filings to population
1
.
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The data, reproduced in the graph (top right), shows the
number of European patent filings per million inhabitants in
2015. Switzerland comes out on top, with 873 applications
per million inhabitants, whilst the UK sits 16th on the list with
only 79 applications per million inhabitants. This means that
Switzerland has over ten times as many European patent
filings as the UK, per million inhabitants.
