Last year, the United States was the country that filed the most patents in Europe. However, according to the classification of enterprises, China's Huawei can be called the boss, and has applied for more patents than Samsung.
The number of patent applications received by the European Patent Office in 2021 has increased again. After a decline during the epidemic, the bureau received a total of 188,600 patent applications last year, a year-on-year increase of 4.5%, hitting a new high. Among them, the digital and medical fields accounted for the largest proportion, as well as enterprises from China.
Breaking it down, 15,400 applications were submitted in the field of digital communication, an increase of 9.4% over the previous year, followed by 15,231 patent applications filed in the field of medical technology, an increase of 8.8% year-on-year, and then computer technology (14,671).
Yann Ménière, an expert at the European Patent Office, told AFP that by country, the top countries for filing patent applications were the United States, Germany, Japan and China. The United States filed 46,533 patent applications, an increase of 5% over last year, and China submitted a total of 16,665 patent applications last year, a quarter more than the previous year. There were 25,969 applications from Germany, a year-on-year increase of 0.3%.
Meunier said that China's inventions and creations in the field of artificial intelligence are particularly conspicuous, and the number of patent applications submitted has also doubled year-on-year. Among them, the most outstanding company is Huawei. In terms of companies, Huawei was the company that applied for the most patents last year, followed by two Korean companies: Samsung and LG, followed by European companies Ericsson of Sweden and Siemens of Germany.
