Skip to main content
Knowledge4Policy
Knowledge for policy

Supporting policy with scientific evidence

We mobilise people and resources to create, curate, make sense of and use knowledge to inform policymaking across Europe.

High-tech patent applications to the EPO by priority year

  • Dataset | 16 Oct 2015
Bioeconomy Knowledge Centre

Data on high-tech patent applications to the EPO by priority year, expressed in number of total applications, per million inhabitants and per million of active population.

Within the bioeconomy, patents on micro-organism and genetic engineering (MGE) are specifically relevant.

Patents reflect a country's inventive activity. Patents also show the country's capacity to exploit knowledge and translate it into potential economic gains. In this context, indicators based on patent statistics are widely used to assess the inventive performance of countries.

This dataset provides users with data concerning patent applications / granted to the European Patent Office - EPO, patents granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office - USPTO and triadic patent families. EPO data refer to all patent applications by priority year as opposed to patents granted by priority year, which is the case of USPTO data.

Data collection done at the EPO and at national Patent Offices. Data compilation done at Eurostat based on PATSTAT.

Million inhabitants refer to the population the 1st of January each year, and the main source is the Eurostat collection of Population. Main source for the million labour force figures is the European Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS).

Resources
More information and links
Landing page
Update / Data frequency
annual
Geographic coverageWorld
Temporal coverage
to
Originally published

16 Oct 2015

Related organisation(s)Eurostat - Statistical office of the EU
Knowledge service | MetadataBioeconomy Knowledge Centre
Digital Europa Thesaurus (DET)patentresearchbiotechnology
Related reading
VISUALISATION | 12 Jun 2026
Overview of projects on bio-based plastics
The data shown in this visualisation is a result of a search in the CORDIS (Community Research and Development Information Service) database under the programmes called FP5, FP6, FP7, H2020 and Horizon...
PAGE | 01 Jun 2026
Key resources
Find out about KCB science for policy briefs, selected publications, visualisations and newsletters.
More
Privacy statements, terms and conditions.
You will be directed to the EU Login website where you can login/register as a user. Once connected, your credentials (First name, last name, username, email) will be registered in Knowledge4policy as part of your profile, which will allow you to get involved in all Knowledge4policy communities (help is available).
You are leaving EUROPA

You are about to navigate to an external website. Please note that we are not responsible for its content.