EPO Patent Filings Survey 2014

The European Patent Office (EPO) carries out a survey every year. The study helps estimate the number of patent filings in the next three years. This information of the probable filing developments helps the EPO to forecast the budget and manpower. It also helps to foresee economic trends.

Introduction

For the survey, applicants from the 400 largest EPO clients and a group of approx. 2 800 from the general population were contacted and with a random sampling method, that preferentially selected larger applicants was applied.

New Survey 2014

This year, the study is taking place between April and September 2014. The survey is carried out by the market and opinion research company Ipsos. The EPO encourages everybody who is approached by Ipos to take part in the survey.

Forecast

The EPO has previously also published their results of the survey made for 2013, 2014 and 2015, in the year 2012:

For 2013, the survey promised an increase of patent filings of 1,7 %. Therefore, the survey predicted 252 305 total filings for 2013. In fact, there were 258 090 actual total filings (see below). The forecast is also in fair agreement with the growth rate of 4.0% actually observed from 2012 to 2013.

For 2014, the survey forecasts 266 948 total filings at the EPO. This means a growth of 7.6% contrary to 2012. For the final year 2015, a growth of 10.3% versus 2012 is expected, resulting in 273 621 filings.