By Ana Herrera, Director of Patents, Technological Development and Innovation, and Luis Ignacio Vicente, Strategic Advisor at PONS IP

The Spanish Patent and Trademark Office (SPTO) has recently published its provisional statistics for the year 2024 on the filing of patent applications, utility models, designs and supplementary protection certificates, among others.

According to this published provisional data, year 2024 experienced a decrease in the number of patent applications filed with this office. A quick look back at 2023 shows that it was a particularly good year in terms of the volume of patent applications filed with the SPTO; in fact, it was the best year in the 2021-2023 period. Nevertheless, the provisional figures for 2024 are not only lower than those for 2023, but also lower than those we had as a reference in the previous two years.

A more in-depth analysis broken down by type of application shows that there has been an 11% decrease in the number of national patent applications filed and a nearly 4% decrease in the number of utility models and in the number of designs (4.35% decrease), compared to 2023.

If we look specifically at non-national patent applications, in particular international applications (PCTs) and European applications (EPs), we see that there has also been a decrease (of almost 15% compared to 2023) in the number of Spanish PCTs filed with the SPTO, as well as in Spanish EP applications (26% compared to 2023), compared to the previous two years.

It is important to note that this data is provisional and that, in the case of Spanish PCT and EP applications, the last month or two of the year are probably still not considered. They do provide us, however, with a fairly accurate picture of what happened in 2024 with the patent applications filed with the SPTO and their evolution compared to previous years. If we look at the general data on PCT and EP applications filed with the SPTO, that is, not only Spanish applications, we do see a slight increase compared to 2023 (2% in PCTs and 4% in EPs), but this is clearly a very moderate gain.

Validations are also worth highlighting, since according to this recently published data there was an 11% increase in the number of validations in Spain of European patents compared to 2023, which is likely due to the effect of the entry into force of the Unitary Patent (June 2023). Spain is not currently part of this agreement and perhaps the fact that it remains outside of it has led to this increase, since holders who have chosen to request the unitary effect for their European patents necessarily consider also validating them in the main countries that are still outside the agreement (such as Spain and the United Kingdom), as this is a profitable strategy that would complete the scope of protection.

While we wait to see and analyse more complete data that the SPTO may publish on types of applicants, autonomous regions that generate the most patents, how the volume of patents has evolved according to type of technology and industrial sectors, the conclusion in light of this current data could be the following. This data a priori reflects that Spanish applicants have slowed down their patent registration activity in 2024, but given that the numbers showed a considerable growth in 2023 compared to 2021 and 2022, what happened in 2024 is probably not a trend but rather something circumstantial and affected by the good growth in 2023.

The truth is that by unifying the data from the three paths to protection managed by the SPTO, PCT, European patent and national patent, 200 fewer patents were filed with the Office in 2024 compared to the previous year. This data does not correspond to the increased R&D efforts that have been made in recent months by both the different Administrations and the business sector. The SPTO itself has also promoted the launch of awareness-raising actions for the different stakeholders. In this favourable context for innovation, we aim to continue moving towards the incorporation of industrial property in public R&D tenders and, on the part of the business associations, to continue fostering a culture of industrial property as the best way to manage intangible assets.

In fact, in recent years (2020 to 2023) we have witnessed a progressive and sustained upward trend in the volume of European applications by Spanish applicants, apparently to the detriment of national applications. This clearly reflects an awareness of the need for internationalisation among Spanish companies with R&D&I activity and which is demonstrated every year by the growth data of applications before the European Patent Office (EPO), where applications by Spanish companies for European patents have grown by almost 50% in the last 10 years. It is more than likely that this internationalisation strategy, starting from the early stages of patent protection, will continue to be the top choice, since it is the one that makes the most sense in a globalised world and in the race for technological sovereignty. Nevertheless, it is also important not to lose focus and to continue striving to increase the number of patent applications filed by Spanish applicants in order to gradually introduce Spain in the ranking of European countries that generate the most patents, since we still have a long way to go in this regard.