News & Analysis
Samsung ranked top filer of patents in Europe
Peter Clarke
3/7/2013 9:53 AM EST
LONDON – Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has taken over from Siemens AG as the leading filer of patent applications in Europe according to a report on 2012 from the European Patent Office (EPO). However, Qualcomm dropped several places in the ranking compared with 2011.
The EPO received record-breaking 257,744 patent filings in 2012 from all over the world, an increase of 5.2 percent over 2011 (244,934). The EPO also published 65 687 granted patents, 5.8 percent more than in 2011 (62,115).
The number of patent applications filed with the EPO that originated from the 38 European countries that make up the EPO was also a record beating the previous high set in 2008.
"The growth of filings from European businesses is a clear indication that industry here has opted to innovate its way out of the economic crisis," said Benoit Battistelli, president of the EPO, in a statement.
However, the significance of electronics to technology was reflected in the list of companies ranked by the number of patents applications. Among the top ten firms were four European companies, four companies from Asia and two from the US. For the first time, however, the ranking was topped by an Asian company, Samsung, followed by Siemens and BASF. Robert Bosch and Ericsson are the two other European companies in the top ten. A Chinese company - ZTE - broke into the top ten for the first time, advancing from 43rd to 10th position.
"We at the EPO are proud that the EU has entrusted us with delivering the unitary patent, recognizing the role of the EPO as a key enabler of innovation in Europe," Battistelli added.
Click on image to enlarge.
Siemens falls to second place as Samsung climbs to number one. Source: European Patent Office
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Olaf.Barheine
3/7/2013 12:47 PM EST
The question is, how many patents find their way into real products. And how many disappear in a drawer?
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nastaynas
3/7/2013 11:33 PM EST
Does filing patents mean granted patents?
@Olaf: from a tech giant's perspective (with lots and lots of money), keeping patents in their drawer is a perfectly planned defensive strategy though.
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pinhead
3/8/2013 12:18 PM EST
"keeping patents in their drawer is a perfectly planned defensive strategy though"
Agreed - most of the truly good productized stuff doesn't get patented, anyhow, it will be kept as trade secret.
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eewiz
3/8/2013 12:15 AM EST
why Apple,Google,Microsoft are not on the list? They dont think european market big enough?
And whats up with RIM/Sharp and some near bankruptcy companies on the list? They should focus on their products first before piling up patents.
ZTE/Huawei continues on with the mission of world dominion
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FraAmelia
3/8/2013 2:52 AM EST
STMICROELECTRONICS is not present in the list...very bad sign
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Battar
3/10/2013 3:12 AM EDT
Filing a patent application doesn't mean that a patent will be granted.
Having a patent granted doesn't mean that it has any value (patents often describe very narrow, specific, items, so narrow in fact that the patent is irrelevant.)
Just because the USPTO grants a patent doesn't mean that the invention hasn't been patented before by someone else - the USPTO are expert at not finding pior art, and often grant patents for inventions patented earlier (sometimes decades earlier). All this I tell from experience.
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DrQuine
3/12/2013 9:21 PM EDT
I'd also be interested in the impact of the patents. There are companies that file many patents that are tiny variations on the same concept (often even with the same title). Unfortunately the statistics on patents issued and patents cited take years to develop and therefore don't satisfy our desire for immediate news. Furthermore, when the statistics do become available, they represent the impact of work that was done years earlier.
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