S.Korea's European patent applications surpass 10,000 in 2022

South Korean companies such as LG Electronics Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. surpassed a historic milestone by filing over 10,000 patent applications in Europe last year, showing the second-highest growth rate among all countries. LG and Samsung were ranked second and fourth, respectively, in terms of individual company rankings.

According to the European Patent Office (EPO) on Tuesday, the number of patent applications filed by Korean companies in Europe last year increased by 10% compared to the previous year, reaching a record-high 10,367 applications. This growth rate is the second highest, after China's 15.1%.

In terms of overall patent applications, South Korea ranked sixth, following the United States (48,088), Germany (24,684), Japan (21,576), China (19,041) and France (10,900).

The number of patent applications is an early indicator of a company's investment in research and development. This result indicates that innovation is still robustly ongoing despite the economic uncertainty of last year.

The top-five technology fields in which Korean patent applications were filed with the European Patent Office were electrical machinery, apparatus and energy, digital communications, computer technology, semiconductor, and audiovisual technology.

The field in which Korean companies showed the strongest growth in patent applications was electrical machinery, apparatus and energy, which increased by 67.7% in 2022 compared to the previous year, surpassing China (47.4%), Japan (19.9%) and the United States (18.1%). In particular, the number of patent applications in the battery technology field, which had decreased by 14% compared to the previous year in 2021, rebounded in 2022 with a 96% increase.

Furthermore, South Korea filed 22.6% more patents in the digital communications field than in the previous year, making it the second-strongest field, and recorded the highest growth rate among major patent application countries with a 54.9% growth rate in the life sciences field.

Write to Sungsu Bae at baebae@hankyung.com