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Switzerland runner-up for academic patents per capita in Europe

Switzerland with second most academic patents per capita in Europe
Switzerland has the second most academic patents per capita in Europe Keystone-SDA

Switzerland has the second highest number of academic patents per person in Europe. The federal technology institute ETH Zurich is the leader in the number of start-ups that register patents from research at universities.

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Switzerland has 772 academic patents per million inhabitants, according to a report published by the European Patent Office (EPO) on Tuesday. Only Denmark, with 800 academic patents per million inhabitants, has more.

The leading countries in terms of the absolute number of academic inventions are Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Italy. Switzerland ranks sixth in Europe and is responsible for 5.7% of all academic patents in Europe.

+ Intellectual property: record number of patent applications filed

In addition to ETH Zurich, which is responsible for 2,219 academic patents, 24 other Swiss institutions also generated at least one patent at the EPO between 2000 and 2020. According to the report, ETH Zurich is followed by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) with 1,697 patents and the University of Zurich with 930 patents.

Translated from German by DeepL/ts

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