The UAB registers 328 patents in the past 20 years
The UAB ranks second in Spain in terms of number of patent applications according to a new study by the European Patents Office (EPO) on academic inventions registered from 2000 to 2020. The report highlights the inventive role of European universities and reveals that Catalonia's universities lead the ranking in pattent applications submitted in Spain. During the years analysed by the EPO, the UAB registered a total of 328 patents.
Patent applications originating from European universities have been on the rise over the past two decades, the report reveals. Specifically, they represent 10.2% of all patent applications filed at the EPO by European applicants in the 2000-2020 period.
Spain ranks tenth in Europe in number of academic patents, and Catalonia leads the state in patent applications, as three Catalan universities are among the top five: the University of Barcelona (UB) has 330 patents; the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), which ranks second, 328; followed by the Universitat Politècnica de València (301), the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya – Barcelona Tech (298), and the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (260).
Most of the patents applied for by the UAB correspond to the biomedical and health field, followed by electronic engineering, telecommunications and materials engineering. Also noteworthy are the patents related to research in neurodegenerative diseases, rare diseases and biopesticides. Regarding the transfer of these patents to the socioeconomic environment, in 2023, for example, the UAB signed eight licensing agreements with different companies.
The EPO report, which is based on data from 1,200 European universities that submitted patent applications to the EPO between 2000 and 2020, also highlights that European universities have gone from filing 24% of applications in 2000 to 45% in 2019. This practice is also observed in Spain, where the vast majority of academic inventions are managed from the university.