EUROPEAN PATENT : TELECOMS SECTOR LEADING PACK OF APPLICANTS.

The telecommunications and IT sectors filed the highest number of patent applications with the European Patent Office (EPO) in 2011. The court cases between the giants in the field - Microsoft, Apple, and Samsung - are evidence of this. With 14,600 applications, the telecoms and IT sectors have now overtaken health-related applications (medical technology and medicine), which numbered 14,200.

The intergovernmental body EPO, which brings together 38 countries that manage European patents, published its annual report, on 23 March. It completes the geographical statistics provided in January. There was a dip in 2008-2009 as a result of the crisis, but the year 2011 confirmed that innovation - and therefore patent applications - had resumed in 2010. Indeed, the EPO received 243,000 applications last year, ie 3% more than in 2010 - a figure welcomed by the organisation's President, Benoit Battistelli, who stressed that among the top ten applicants there were five European companies.

SIEMENS AT TOP

Germany's Siemens received the EPO's Top Patent Applicant Certificate' with 2,235 patent applications and 837 patents granted - the EPO only validates on average four in ten applications.

Battistelli said that Siemens invests in an exemplary manner to stay at the edge of innovation in fields as varied as medical technology, energy and transports, with a strong focus on green' technologies. The top ten groups include: the Netherlands' Philips (1,759), the German chemical group BASF (1,638), the household appliances specialist...