Belgian patent applications increase by almost 10 percent

The main Belgian patent applicants in 2018 were Solvay, imec, Umicore and UGent.

The number of patent applications from Belgian companies and inventors at the European Patent Office (EPO) increased by almost 10 percent last year. This is the strongest increase since 2010, to a record number of 2,360 applications.

The main Belgian patent applicants were Solvay, imec, Umicore and UGent. The largest growth was in transport and chemistry. 

The growth in the number of patent applications filed by Belgian companies, universities and research institutions in 2018 followed a year of decline (-2.7 percent in 2017).

The Belgian increase of 9.7 percent is, after Denmark (+14.4 percent), the highest growth rate in the top ten countries that have filed European patent applications, and is well above the average growth rate of the 28 EU member states (+ 3.8 percent). Flanders accounts for 62.9 pc of all Belgian patent applications, followed by Wallonia (21.2 pc) and the Brussels-Capital Region (15.8 pc).