Inventions in areas such as vaccines, mRNA research, materials science, or advances in laser technology owe their existence to university research. According to a recent EPA report, the share of academic patent filings has increased significantly in recent years. Today, inventions originating at European universities account for 10.2 percent of all patents filed with the EPA. German universities have contributed substantially to this development. They are the source of 24.1 percent of all academic patents in Europe filed between 2000 and 2020. This makes Germany the leading country in Europe in terms of the number of academic patents.
The study is based on data from 1,200 European universities that filed patents with the EPA between 2000 and 2020. The TU München is responsible for the highest number of academic patents in this period with 2,183 patents. Ranking second and third among German universities are the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg with 1,445 and the Free University Berlin with 1,392 filings. Ludwig Maximilians University ranks sixth in the national ranking 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 are leading in the total number of academic patents. However, half of the filings are concentrated in a small number of universities. These include TUM, Université Grenoble Alpes, Oxford University, ETH Zurich, the University of Copenhagen, and Politecnico di Milano. They all specialize in natural sciences and receive support from special institutions for knowledge transfer.
