Inventions in areas such as vaccines, mRNA research, materials science, and advances in laser technology owe their existence to university research. According to a recent EPA report The proportion of academic patent applications has increased significantly in recent years. Inventions originating at European universities now account for 10.2 percent of all patents filed with the EPO. German universities have contributed significantly to this development. They are the origin of 24.1 percent of all academic patents in Europe filed between 2000 and 2020. This makes Germany the European leader in the number of academic patents.
The study is based on data on 1,200 European universities that filed patent applications with the EPO between 2000 and 2020. The Technical University of Munich With 2,183 patents, it is responsible for the highest number of academic patents during this period. Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg ranks second and third among German universities with 1,445 and Free University Berlin with 1,392 applications, respectively. Ludwig Maximilian University ranks sixth in the national rankings with 1,165 patents.
With 190 universities, Germany has the second-highest number of higher education institutions that filed European patents between 2000 and 2020. Only France can top this figure.
According to the study, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Italy lead the way in terms of the total number of academic patents. However, half of the applications are accounted for by a small number of universities. These include, in addition to TUM, the Université Grenoble Alpes, Oxford University, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, the University of Copenhagen, and the Polytechnic University of Milan. They all specialize in scientific fields and receive support from dedicated knowledge transfer institutions.
