Italy eighth for number of European patents filed
10 May 2010Eighth for the number of European patents filed (360 thousand in 10 years); fourth for Community trademarks; second for design applications. This is Italy’s position among the 12 most industrialized nations in the world (G12), as emerges from the survey carried out by the Observatory on patents, trademarks and design applications published by the Union of Italian Chambers of Commerce.
Italy has proved that it is more inclined toward protection of the company and creativity rather than scientific research and technological innovation, and appears to concentrate its capacity for innovation in some interesting market niches: first of all biomedicine, but also packaging processes.
Between 1999 and 2008 the European Patent Office (EPO) published 1,116,906 patent applications, 92.5% of which attributed to G12 countries. The 36,324 applications filed by Italy represent 3.3% of those published by EPO and Italy thus ranks eighth in the international classification. Growing by an average annual rate of 4.6%, however, Italy has a better performance than other European “colleagues” (Great Britain +2.9%, Germany +3.8%, France +4%).
