Patents ranking
March 6, 2014
Among all German companies, technology firms Siemens and Bosch filed the largest number of patents with the European Patent Office (EPO) last year, the agency reported March 6.
Both companies sent in about 1,600 patent applications each in 2013, followed by Chemicals giants BASF and Bayer.
Most German applications sent to EPA came from the southern German state of Bavaria, which accounted for 27 percent of the 26,300 filings coming from Europe's biggest economy. Runner-up was the state of Baden-Württemberg.
EPO reforms
Overall, the German firms in question only had to concede the top spot of the list to South Korea's electronics company Samsung which filed a total of 2,618 applications last year.
The European Patent Office had last year taken some pivotal measures to make filing procedures easier, among them the launch of a free online machine translation service.
It also worked closely with the US Patent and Trademark Office on creating a new joint classification scheme for applications, incorporating best practices from both agencies.
hg/hc (dpa, Reuters)