Patent applicants and applications; technology area, 2000-2010

This table gives an overview of the number of patent applicants and patent applications at the European Patent Office (EPO) and NL Patent Office, a division of NL Agency (NLOC). Patents can be granted to enterprises, universities, institutions, private persons or other entities as long as the invention which they cover fulfils certain criteria. To obtain a patent the invention must be novel, contain an inventive step and be industrially applicable. This is assessed by a patent office like the EPO or NLOC. The patent office will grant or reject the application.

The data are broken down by the technology area the invention relates to. This does not necessarily have to be the same area in which the applicant is economically active (SIC).

If an application can be classified as relating to two (or more) technology areas, each technology area is attributed a fraction of the application. If, for example, an application can be classified as relating to two technology areas, half of one application is allocated to each technology area. As a result the total number of patent applications remains equal. The enterprise applying for this patent, on the other hand, is counted twice: once for each technology area.

For a small number of patent applications the applicant or technology area is unknown by Statistics Netherlands. Therefore, these applications are not classified by technology area.

This table has been stopped.

Data available from 2000 to 2010.

Status of the figures: Data are final for 2000 to 2009. The data for 2010 are provisional. Since this table has been stopped, the data for 2010 will not be finalized.

Changes as of 30 October 2015: None, this table has been stopped.

When will new figures be published? No longer applicable.