The European patent office received 7,033 patent applications from the Netherlands last year, a 3.5% rise on 2022. Medical technology was the biggest sector for Dutch investors and Noord Brabant put forward more applications than any other Dutch region with over 50% of the Dutch total.

Despite the number of applications beating the EU average of 1.5% growth, the Netherlands remains in eighth place in the European rankings and fifth in terms of applications per capita.

Philips, which has transformed itself into a medical technology firm, was ninth worldwide when it comes to applications, having filed 299 patents last year. Philips carries out much of its R&D in Eindhoven, the capital of Noord-Brabant province.

In total, one in five Dutch patents came from Philips. Signify, the Philips lighting spin-off, was second on the list, followed by aerospace group Airbus and chip machinery maker ASML – founded in 1984 as a joint venture between ASM and Philips.

“It is not unique to the Netherlands to have one company dominating and we do see this in smaller countries,” says the patent office’s examiner for the Netherlands Victor Veefkind.

The Netherlands also performs well in chemical patents and that, he says, is down to Unilever and DSM. “And they were pretty strong this year compared with 2022,” he says.

Unilever is now headquartered in London but the EPO counts innovations as belonging to the country where the inventor lives. “And that means most of the Unilever patents count as inventions from the Netherlands, because they were done by someone who lives here,” Veefkind says.

Women inventors

This year’s EPO report also included a focus on women inventors and found 27% of patent applications included at least one women on the list. In the Netherlands, this figure was 31%, roughly in line with France, Belgium and Finland but well below Spain at 46%.

“The Netherlands is now above the European average but we need to see how things are next year,” says Veefkind.

“This year we had a big increase in the number of inventions in the chemicals sector and women are better represented in the chemicals sector that electronics and heavy engineering. So I think time will tell if this is a permanent situation or just reflects 2023.”