Europe’s patented lack of initiative

Airbus, the aircraft maker whose most innovative design so far has been the A380 superjumbo, recently lodged a patent application for a plane with a doughnut-shaped cabin.

Passengers would be seated around curved aisles, and board through doors arranged around the hole in the doughnut’s middle.

This “flying doughnut” could be the European group’s most radical reinvention of aircraft structure. But it is only one of the many patents — about 6,000 on average — that Airbus lodges each year, to protect what most often turns into pie in the sky rather than planes.

Even if few of Airbus’s wacky ideas become real-life products, however, its patent-filing energies set it apart from most other European companies. Europe seriously lags behind its main competitors in this respect.

The US, Japan and China lead the pack in the patent filing stakes — together accounting for 60 per cent of the 205,300 patents filed in 2013 through the World International Patent Organisation. In the top five largest patent applicants, Germany was the only one to hail from Europe.

Even within the region, only a third of total patent filings last year came from European Union member states. At the European Patent Office, South Korea’s Samsung filed more patents in 2013 than any other company: 2,800.

It is not that Europe lacks inventors. Measured by the ratio of patent applications to population, Germany — with one application per 3,403 people — beats the US, with one application per 5,521, and way outstrips China’s measly one application per 65,068. Instead, Europe’s problem appears to be an inability to turn inventions into sellable products.

A particularly striking example of this is the use of graphene. This so-called ‘wonder material’ — only one atom thick, but stronger than steel and an efficient conductor of both heat and electricity — has myriad possible applications: in hyper-fast computers, foldable mobile phones and superstrong aircraft wings.

Since its discovery in a Manchester physics lab in 2004, more than 11,000 graphene-related patents and patent applications have been filed globally. But, to date, the UK has accounted for less than 1 per cent of these, with Asian organisations taking out nearly two-thirds.

As of June, Samsung — again — had lodged the most graphene patent applications, with nearly 600 published, according to Cambridge IP, a UK-based technology strategy company.

The UK government is well aware of the country’s laggardness in this respect and has launched a range of initiatives to address it. George Osborne, chancellor, pledged more investment in graphene in his Budget in March and announced extra funding for “catapult” innovation centres in his Autumn Statement.

None has so far made a big impact. A report by Cambridge University’s Judge Business School last month found that, since 2001, R&D spending by businesses as a share of gross domestic product (excluding tax credits) has fallen by 14 per cent.

If companies are to be believed, one of the main explanations for Europe’s poor patent performance lies in the high cost and bureaucracy involved in applying for one. At a European manufacturing conference last week, one chief executive bewailed the fact that it cost $40,000 to get a patent registered in the European Union — 100 times more than it costs to do so in the US.

This expense, he said, put a significant brake on his company’s growth.

The European Patent Office — itself no stranger to large sums, given its €2 billion annual budget — confirms these numbers. A typical patent valid in six to eight EU member states, it says, will cost between €30,000 and €40,000 over 12 years. And the bureaucratic pain only adds to the financial one.

When a European patent is granted, it is subject to the national rules and practices of each member state where the applicant seeks patent protection. This necessitates multiple validations and translations — putting a further burden on the region’s businesses.

One practical measure to address the problem would be a single EU patent, which has been — like many such initiatives — long promised but never delivered. The EPO says the first unitary patent could be granted in 2015. It cannot come soon enough.

— Financial Times