Patent applicants and applications; sic 2008 and company size

This table gives an overview of the number of patent applicants and patent applications at the European Patent Office (EPO) and the Netherlands Patent Office (OCNL), a department of the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO). 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 OCNL. The patent office will grant or reject the application.

The data are broken down by economic activity of the enterprise applying for a patent. For the classification by economic activity the Dutch Standard Industrial Classification (SIC 2008) is used. The data give an indication which branches are (most) innovative. Additionally, a breakdown by enterprise size class is available.

Data available from: 2013

Status of the figures:
The figures from 2013 to 2019 are final. The figures for 2020 are revised provisional. The figures for 2021 are provisional.

Changes as of 26 February 2025:
Provisional figures for 2020 and 2021 have been updated.
For applicants with the attribute 'unknown' (branches, company size and country of ultimate controlling institutional unit), no link is available with the General Business Register. In the past, links for these applicants were forwarded from other statistical years where a link was possible, but for the sake of consistency with the General Business Register, a link is only assigned if the company is actually listed in the General Business Register in the same year as the patent application. The change results in approximately 10 to 120 patent applicants per statistical year no longer being linked to the register and receiving the attribute ‘unknown’. These are mostly companies that are newly created and not yet included in the register or companies that have just ceased to exist in the same year that the patent application was registered.
In recent years, there have also been changes to the PATSTAT source data for statistical years that have since been given a 'final' status. Patents may still have been added to the PATSTAT database with long delays, or they may have been removed from the database. This revision makes all statistical years consistent with the most recent PATSTAT source data which was made available at the end of 2024. The adjustment affects at most a few dozen patent applications per statistical year (increase or decrease).

Changes as of 12 July 2024:
The figures for 2019 and 2020 have been adjusted and the provisional figures for 2021 have been added.

When will new figures be published?
Mid 2025 the figures for 2020 and 2021 will be updated and new figures for 2022 will be added. Beginning of 2026 the figures for 2021 and 2022 will be updated.