The German Patent and Trade Mark Office (DPMA) recorded 48,144 patent applications in 2014. The largest number of patent applications came from Bavaria, namely 15,533, or 32.3% (448 million). Patent applications in Bavaria increased for the fifth consecutive year, even by 4.7% (448 million) compared to the previous year.
Baden-Württemberg takes second place with 14,533 registrations, followed by North Rhine-Westphalia (7,116 registrations). The allocation of registrations to federal states is based on the location of the person, company, or institution registering. Based on the absolute number of registrations, Bavaria significantly increased its lead over Baden-Württemberg in 2014. However, the absolute number of registrations does not provide any information about how innovative the populations of the individual federal states truly are.
On average, Germans registered 60 patents per 100,000 inhabitants.
