Catalonia accounts for 35% of all patent applications in Spain
Catalonia-based companies filed a total of 547 patent applications in 2016, a 6.6 per cent rise from 2015
BrusselsAccording to the European Patent Office’s yearly report, Catalonia tops the chart of Spanish regions by number of patent applications filed in 2016: 35.1 per cent. This 6.6 per cent increase over 2015 keeps Catalonia in the lead, as the gap with runner-up Madrid widens.
Catalonia’s pharma company Laboratoris del Doctor Esteve is the firm that filed the most patent applications, with a total of thirty, followed by Consell Superior d’Investigacions Científiques (CSIC) (29 applications), Telefónica (26), Repsol and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, both at 20.
In 2016 Catalonia —which accounts for 19 per cent of Spain’s economy— applied for a total of 547 patents out of the 1,558 filed in the whole of Spain, whereas in 2015 the figure was 515. Therefore, Catalonia is widening the gap with the other Spanish regions trailing behind: Madrid is the runner-up, with 321 applications (an 11 per cent drop over the previous year), followed by the Basque Country with 209 (up 8.9 per cent), Valencia (116, but with the largest increase: 17.2 per cent) and Andalusia, with 103 patents.
Still, Spain’s overall performance is modest and no match for the world’s largest economies. In 2016 Spain filed merely 1 per cent of the 159,353 applications received by the European Patent Office, while 25 per cent came from the US, 16 per cent from Germany and 13 from Japan.
The number of Spanish applications rose by 2.6 per cent, the third largest growth after Belgium and Italy, but the ratio of patents per number of inhabitants is one of the lowest among the world’s 30 most advanced economies: only 32 applications for every one million people.
By number of applications filed relative to the size of its population, Spain ranks 27 out of 30. What’s more, there are no Spanish firms among the top 50 companies that have filed the most patent applications. By sector, freight and pharma saw the largest number of applications (8 per cent of the total number), followed by biotechnology and civil engineering, with 6 per cent. Still, the number of applications granted (752) represents a 47 per cent hike over the previous year.
Switzerland sits at the opposite end, with 892 application per one million inhabitants, followed by the Netherlands (405), Sweden (360), Denmark (334) and Finland (331). Global tech firms continue to lead the ranking, with Holland’s Phillips taking the top spot with 2,568 applications followed by Chinese giant Huawei (2,390) and Korea’s Samsung (2,316) and LG (2,313).
Spain’s poor score in patents has much to do with its funding for R&D: it is one of the lowest in this area. According to OECD figures, Spain spends only 1.24 per cent of its budget on R&D, even though the Spanish government claims to be committed to reaching 2 per cent, with the European Commission advising 3 per cent. Spain’s Centro para el Desarrollo Tecnológico Industrial (Centre for Industrial Technological Development) is a public body that promotes research and innovation. Director Francisco Marín says that part of the “problem” is that Spain’s innovation is scarce because it is SMEs who do most of the R&D and their resources are more limited, whereas in the rest of Europe it is the larger companies who do most of it.
