IW: Patents from independent inventors at an all-time low

Cologne – In Germany, fewer and fewer inventions are being patented by private individuals. This is the result of a new analysis by the German Economic Institute (IW Cologne), which the newspapers of the Funke Media Group (Sunday editions) are reporting on in advance. According to the IW, the number of innovations patented by inventors reached a historic low, according to the latest available figures. The institute cites statistics from 2022, when 2,160 patents were filed by independent inventors. Since the turn of the millennium, the number of inventions produced by independent inventors has thus plummeted by a good 75 percent. Generally, the lion's share of all patents in Germany are filed by companies, universities, or other legal entities. However, according to the IW, independent inventors are statistically increasingly being pushed out. In the mid-1990s, their share of total patent activity was just over a quarter; today, it's just under five percent. The erosion of independent inventors in Germany continues unabated, IW patent expert Oliver Koppel told the Funke Media Group newspapers, referring to the survey results. "After a final, brief upward trend during the coronavirus pandemic, the number of patents generated by garage tinkerers has reached a new all-time low—and there are no indications that the situation will improve again in the future," Koppel said. Fundamentally, independent inventors have a harder time than they did a few decades ago. "The state of knowledge has increased dramatically, so it's simply becoming increasingly difficult to invent something truly new," explained expert Köppel. Meanwhile, even larger corporations and industrial companies are relying on larger teams. "The complexity of inventions has increased, and garage tinkerers are finding it increasingly difficult to overcome the novelty threshold," Koppel summarized. However, the patent expert himself champions the so-called garage tinkerers. These are characterized by "out-of-the-box thinking, which results in valuable innovation impulses that traditional companies generally cannot provide," said Koppel. He called for more support for inventors in general. "While support for start-ups in Germany is now working very well and politicians are investing heavily here, support for garage tinkerers has actually been cut," the expert said. While this isn't catastrophic from an economic perspective, Germany is depriving itself of valuable innovation impulses. However, according to the study, women are more active than they were some time ago. "Since the turn of the millennium, the proportion of independent female inventors in all independent patent applications has increased from 6.4 to 9.9 percent," the survey states. The general erosion of free inventions has not left female inventors unscathed: While they generated 575 patent applications across Germany in 2000, this number fell to just 214 in 2022, which still corresponds to 37 percent of the initial figure, according to the IW. Compared to their male counterparts (23 percent), the decline among female inventors was thus significantly smaller. According to the IW survey, the most populous federal states also accounted for the most patent applications by female garage inventors in 2022: Bavaria (21.2 percent), North Rhine-Westphalia (15.0 percent), and Baden-Württemberg (14.5 percent). In contrast, in the eastern German federal states (including Berlin), a significantly higher proportion of all garage inventor patents, at 15.6 percent, came from women than in the western part of the country (8.9 percent). "Women already create one in six to seven free inventions in East Germany, while in West Germany this only applies to one in eleven," the study found. According to IW expert Koppel, well-known patents filed by garage tinkerers include, among others, the frequency hopping method for telecommunications, radio control for torpedoes, the coffee filter, the magnetic levitation train, and the dishwasher. Velcro and its origins are also a "prime example of a garage tinkerer's invention." According to IW data, the number of patent applications from Germany has generally stagnated for years due to demographic changes. "The number of patents filed with the German Patent and Trademark Office is increasing, but this growth is exclusively due to applicants from abroad who want to obtain protection for their inventions in Germany," Koppel said. Things are going better in other countries. In contrast to Germany, China, the USA, and South Korea have experienced very positive dynamics, according to the expert.