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Espoo remains European hub for patent filings

Over four-fifths of the 1413 applications filed in the Espoo were by Nokia, the locally-headquartered network equipment manufacturer.

Nokia

The City of Espoo came in sixth in Patent Index 2023, the European Patent Office’s (EPO) ranking of European cities by patent applications.

Located in the capital region of Finland, the roughly 275 000-resident city retained its position in the ranking for the third consecutive year by producing 1 413 patent applications in 2023, a total that was exceeded only by Munich (3 441), Paris (3 119), Eindhoven (2 561), Stockholm (2 287) and London (1 856).

Nokia was the top patent applicant in Espoo, banging out 1 186 applications to climb from 16th to 12th place in the company ranking.

With the city also the domicile of five other companies to make the national top 10 – KONE, Valmet, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Metso and Neste – it accounted for 60.5 per cent of all patent applications from Finland in 2023, an increase of two percentage points from 2022.

Companies in Helsinki, by comparison, filed for 388 patents in 2023.

Finland was the 15th largest patent-filing country in the world with 2 336 applications, following the largest year-on-year increase (9.2%) among countries with at least 1 000 applications in Europe. The total translates to 422.1 applications per million inhabitants, the fourth highest on the continent after Switzerland, Sweden and Denmark.

In terms of patents filed by women, the country shared fourth place with the Netherlands after Spain, France and Belgium.

By: Aleksi Teivainen
28.03.2024