Siemens reached the first place in the European Patent Office’s application ranking for 2018, and with 7.300 inventions worldwide in the fiscal year 2018. With a total of 2.493 patent applications, Siemens takes the place of last year’s leader Huawei of the European ranking, which is at second place this year, followed by Samsung and LG. Siemens had taken second place in 2017, and was already ranked no. 1 in Europe in 2011.
More than 25% of the patents are in the areas of Industry 4.0 and digitalization, where Siemens submitted considerably more applications for intellectual property rights than in the prior year. The company also reported a substantial increase in the areas of artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, and is also further focusing on the quality and the broad regional distribution of its protective rights.
Siemens holds a total of more than 65,000 patents, and the company’s employees submitted around 3,900 patent applications and 7,300 invention disclosure reports worldwide in fiscal 2018. Based on 220 workdays a year, this represents an average of about 33 inventions per day. Siemens has around 43,000 R&D employees in 44 countries, including some 14,100 in Germany.