A report issued by the European Commission has revealed which EU member states make the most money from patent licensing.
It shows that licences and patent revenues from abroad make up more than 2.5% of the GDP of Switzerland and the Netherlands. In most countries these revenues represent less than 0.5% of GDP and in Lithuania and Turkey they are close to zero.
The Innovation Union Scoreboard 2011, published by the Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology, also compares rates of patenting and trade marking in EU member states. The authors conclude that Sweden, Denmark, Germany and Finland are what it describes as “innovation leaders”, while Romania, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Latvia perform least well on its innovation index.