28 June 2023
The European Patent
Office (EPO) published its Annual Review 2022 today, complemented
by a video featuring highlights from the past 18 months. Together, they tell
a story of a commitment to provide innovators with the highest quality
products and services, as the race for sustainable inventions intensifies.
The Annual
Review 2022 is accompanied by detailed annex reports offering insights into
key areas such as quality, environmental sustainability, international
co-operation, social aspects, IT, data protection, communication and the
European Patent Academy. In addition to providing key operational results, the
publication of these reports reflects our commitment to transparency and good
governance.
Commenting on
this year’s review, EPO President António Campinos said: “The European Patent
Office is now more agile, adaptable and sustainable than ever before. Over the
last year we have become a more collaborative organisation, capitalised on the
benefits of an ongoing digital transformation, renewed our commitment to
quality, and worked with our stakeholders to deliver the leading products and
services they need. All while reinforcing our sustainability – environmental,
social, corporate governance and financial. These are crucial achievements as
we begin a new era in European patent protection with the Unitary Patent, supporting
a true single market for technology and a more sustainable global patent system.”
The Annual
Review 2022 presents the results of a year in which the EPO received a
record 193 460 applications, an increase of 2.5% compared to 2021.[1] As innovation remained strong despite
ongoing challenges in many industry sectors and countries last year, our patent
examiners carried out a total of 362 909 search, examination and opposition
products in 2022.
Sustainable
growth with global impact
The Office gained fresh momentum in the
pursuit of its ultimate goal of securing long-term sustainability. With the
release of state-of-the art tools and platforms, the EPO is empowering staff to
provide the highest quality products and services to users. While our digital
transformation journey has reached new milestones, increased dialogue with
users is helping to ensure that our products and services continue to meet their
rapidly changing needs. Together with our intense preparations for this month’s
launch of the Unitary Patent system, these efforts have continued to meet with
high levels of user satisfaction.
The European Patent Network continues
to grow too, as well as foster further collaboration and knowledge-sharing. Access
to patent knowledge also improved thanks to the launch of new interfaces, ranging
from our clean energy technologies platform on Espacenet to our Knowledge
Transfer to Africa initiative, which is fostering co-operation between our
PATLIB network and African universities. Further, as the EPO continues to
pursue carbon neutrality by 2030, we closed 2022 with a historically low level
of emissions. This was achieved by energy saving measures in our buildings, as
well as the increased use of videoconferencing, which as of 2023 is the new
standard for all first instance oral proceedings.
The progress made in achieving our
strategic goals has largely been possible thanks to the feedback, input and
support of our stakeholders. As a result, we are well-positioned to make the
launch of the Unitary Patent a success, and build further on the 50 years
of the European Patent Convention that we will celebrate later this year.
Further information
[1]
For all the latest statistics and trends on European patent applications
and granted patents, see our Patent Index 2022,
published on 28 March 2023.
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