European universities are behind more than 10% of all patent applications filed at the EPO from within Europe. However, wide variations in patterns of ownership and commercialisation are much in evidence.

The EPO announced the winners of the European Inventor Award 2018 at a ceremony today in Paris, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, attended by some 600 guests from the areas of politics, business, intellectual property, science and academia.

While the Netherlands, France and the UK showed significant growth, other countries such as Finland, Switzerland and Spain declined. However, Switzerland still heads the ranking with 848 applications per million inhabitants.

Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Netherlands file most applications per capita.