economic condition
In 2009, the European Patent Office accepted 134542 patent applications, which was 8.3% lower than the previous year (146644).
At the same time, the number of patent application searches completed by the European Patent Office has increased. In 2009, the European Bureau of Specialization conducted 203,509 searches, an increase of 8.9% over the previous year, including 99 European patent searches105, an increase of13% over the previous year; 8 1463 international search, down 0.7% from the previous year; A total of 2,2941articles were searched by the State Bureau and third parties, an increase of 34. 1% over the previous year.
In 2009, the European Patent Office * * * completed 102 178 European patent examinations and 960 1 PCT applications, and the overall work completion increased by 3% compared with the previous year. Of the 124200 applications that ended the review process, 5 1969 (59809 in 2008) were authorized, accounting for 42% of the total. From the date of accepting the patent application, the average time for patent authorization is 43. 1 month (43 months in 2008). Patent application authorization time ranges from 35 months for transportation and general technology to 57 months for biotechnology.
In 2009, the proportion of patent applications in the 36 member countries of the European Patent Organization was 5 1%, slightly higher than the previous year (49.3%). Germany ranked first again with 2,565,438+007 applications (65,438+08.7%), followed by France with 8,929 applications (6.6%) and the Netherlands with 6,738 applications (5%). Among non-European countries, European patent applications from the United States and Japan still dominate, accounting for 24.5% (25.5% in 2008) and14.8% (15.7% in 2008) respectively. The remaining 65,438+00% came from other countries, of which 3.65,438+0% came from South Korea.
The proportion of electronic filing of patent applications is on the rise. In 2009, the proportion of direct applications submitted electronically accepted by the European Special Bureau increased from 49% in the previous year to nearly 60%. At the same time, the proportion of PCT applications submitted electronically accepted by the European Special Bureau, as the PCT application acceptance bureau, has also increased from 665,438+0% in the previous year to 65%.
In the field of patent application technology, in 2009, more than 56% of the patent applications accepted by the European Agency were related to the top ten technical fields. Among them, the most active field of patent application is medicine or veterinary medicine, accounting for11.5% of the total; Followed by electronic communication (10. 1%) and computers (6.5%). Although affected by economic factors, the number of patent applications in most technical fields has declined to varying degrees, the number of patent applications in hydraulic machinery, lighting, drilling and mining has risen against the trend, increasing by 36. 1%, 20.4% and 14.7% respectively over the previous year.
In terms of enterprise applications, Royal Dutch Philips ranked first with 2,556 patent applications. Followed by Siemens/KOOC-0/943, BASF/KOOC-0/699, Samsung/KOOC-0/337, Bosch/KOOC-0/284. China Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. ranked 15 with 672 pieces.