Berlin In no other federal state have so many patents been registered by independent inventors in 2021 as in Bavaria. The German Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA) in Munich registered more than 2,500 applications from the group of independent developers nationwide – 630 of them came from Bavaria.
Bavaria is followed by North Rhine-Westphalia with 455 and Baden-Württemberg with 422 patent applications, according to DPMA statistics published on Monday, which were created on the occasion of the Iena Inventors’ Fair in Nuremberg. The four-day fair starts on October 27th.
The patent office counts those inventors who register their developments in their own name as “free”. Overall, these inventors are a minority, because 93 percent of the patents were registered by companies or research institutions. In total, the Patent Office received 2,558 applications from independent inventors last year, a good nine percent fewer than in the previous year.
If you put the number of patent applications per 100,000 inhabitants, then Bavaria also leads (4.8 applications). Baden-Württemberg (3.8) and Rhineland-Palatinate and Hamburg (both 3.5) come in second and third. Saxony-Anhalt brought up the rear with 1.5 registrations.
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The President of the Patent Office, Cornelia Rudloff-Schäffer, emphasized that freelance inventors had “time and again set pioneering accents” with their patent applications in German economic history, whether it was expansible dowels, screw-stud shoes or airbags. “They are and will remain an important part of our innovation landscape,” said Rudloff-Schäffer.
A typical inventor is “Bayer, mechanical engineer, male”
According to the DPMA, the typical inventor personality is “Bayer, mechanical engineer, male”. Because if you look at the registrations by technology sector, “mechanical engineering” is at the top with 971 registrations. In addition, women are severely underrepresented with a share of just over seven percent.
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Mechanical engineering is followed by the “Other areas” sector (617), in which different technical areas are combined, and the “Instruments” sector (355). According to the Patent Office, it is striking that “electrical engineering” is the only sector to gain fourth place in the number of applications and is making up an ever larger part of the total number of applications.
In 2020, contrary to the long-term trend, there was an increase in free patent applications. This probably has something to do with the corona pandemic, the authority said. Because at that time there was a “noticeable increase in registrations in the areas of face masks and protective clothing”.
More: Many patents, few products – Germany’s barriers to innovation