Italy has always made a name for itself thanks to its creativity and inventiveness. This is as true in the world of art, design, and fashion, as it is in research and industry.
As shown by an analysis carried out by Unioncamere-Dintec, Italian patent applications published by the European Patent Office (EPO) in 2020 were 4.465, marking a +5.3% increase compared to 2019.
This shows that Italy can compete on equal terms at European level. Thanks to research, the country is able to maintain the high quality of its industrial fabric, despite the many difficulties that enterprises otherwise face.
Since 2008, explains Unioncamere-Dintec, Italy has filed more than 52000 patent applications with EPO. Almost 80% of patents are the result of the work of companies, research institutions and individuals located in Northern part of Italy. The most innovative region is Lombardy, with 1,506 patent applications, followed by Emilia-Romagna (703 applications), Veneto (596 applications) and Piedmont (480 applications). The provinces that submitted the most applications are Milan, Turin, Bologna, Rome, and Treviso.
“The data on Italian patents in Europe – underlines the president of Unioncamere, Andrea Prete – show that our country has an important capacity for innovation not only in sectors with a high intensity of knowledge but also in those typical of Italian style”.
The categories of “human needs” (which include areas such as agriculture, clothing, tobacco, and sport) and “industrial techniques and transport” (i.e. manufacturing and automotive industry) are the categories that absorb more than half of Italy’s innovative capacity. In fact, the patents presented in 2020 in these categories have grown by 10% compared to 2019. The largest increases mainly concern some sectors that make Italy famous in the world. For example, the textiles and paper category recorded a +53%, increase, filing 114 applications in 2020.
The Unioncamere survey also highlights that one patent out of 5, of those published in 2020, concerns six biotechnologies that the European Commission considers strategic: micro/nanoelectronics, nanotechnology, photonics, advanced materials, industrial biotechnology and advanced production technologies.
