Nordic University patent filings: Facts and Figures

The European Patent Office (EPO) recently published results from a comprehensive study looking at patent filings from European Universities over approximately a 10-year period. We have separately published an article looking at some of the general findings and discussing some key metrics with respect to UK universities and their patent filings. However, we thought it would be interesting to look at Nordic (Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland) universities and see how their universities compare with the rest of Europe. 

These Nordic countries have much in common in terms of culture and economics and historically have close political relationships, although Norway, like the UK, is not a member of the European Union (EU). Nevertheless, do the universities of these countries adopt a similar approach when it comes to managing and filing their intellectual property (IP), patents in particular? 

Most European states, including the Nordic states of Norway, Finland and Denmark, follow a process where the university that employs the inventor typically owns any IP generated during the course of the inventor’s employment. However, Sweden is unusual in that it still adopts what is termed, Professor’s privilege. Professor’s privilege is the right of university researchers and academics (not just Professors) to own and be able to protect any IP arising from their research. Given that most countries have abandoned Professor’s privilege, you might think that Sweden would likely follow suit. However, Sweden’s argument is that there is not sufficient evidence to suggest that abolishing Professor’s privilege necessarily leads to more successful commercialisation of IP. Indeed, the EPO’s evidence shows that in spite of Professor’s privilege, Swedish academics file more patents per researcher in higher education, that any other European country. Notably, Denmark, which abolished Professor’s privilege in 2000, is second highest when it comes to the number of academic patents filed per researcher, although there is still a significant proportion of what are termed indirect patents (patents filed by companies, rather than a university, but identifying university academics as inventors). It would appear therefore that regardless of the ownership differences between university generated IP from Sweden or Denmark, protection of IP is considered to be particularly important.  

In terms of absolute filing figures, between 2000 and 2020, universities from Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway (directly and indirectly) filed 6,356; 4,394; 3,350; and 994 applications at the EPO, respectively. Sweden is the most populous of the Nordic countries and so may be expected to file more patent applications than the other countries, which are similar in population. Although Norwegian universities filed considerably fewer patents than their other Nordic university colleagues, the number of academic patent applications, as a percentage of all European patents filed by domestic applicants (applicants from within the same country), is comparable with those of Finland and Sweden, with only Denmark filing considerably more. Moreover, in terms of academic patenting versus GDP and population, Norway is on a par with other western European countries.  

Notably, Danish and Swedish universities show a high average number of academic patents per university. These countries, as well as Finland, show a high number of patent filings per capita, which provides a measure of the relative impact of academic patenting independently of the country's population.  

In terms of direct vs indirect patent filings, the share of academic patents not directly filed by universities is about 60% in Norway, 71% in Denmark and over 90% in Sweden and Finland. This perhaps shows that Nordic university academics form strong collaborations with third-parties, be those start-ups or larger entities. However, Professor’s privilege in Sweden makes the Swedish figures difficult to fully analyse. In Denmark, Sweden and Finland, over 50% of indirect patent applications are filed by large entities, whereas in Norway, almost 80% of indirect patent applications are filed by small and medium-sized entities (SMEs), which displays a significant difference between the countries and how differently sized companies collaborate with universities.   

The proportion of academic inventions patented only by start-ups (as compared to joint filings with a university) is relatively high in all Nordic countries, with Sweden being the highest. The number of university-derived patent applications filed per start-up is also high in Sweden and Norway, indicating that the academics continue to be associated with the start-up and generate IP. Given their relative populations, it is also interesting to note that of the top 25 universities by number of start-ups with academic patent applications filed with the EPO (between 2000 – 2020), 4 are from Sweden, 2 from Denmark and 1 from Finland, displaying the importance start-up formation and associated IP generation is in these Nordic countries.   

In conclusion, it can be seen that, aside from Sweden still adopting Professor’s privilege, a great many similarities can be observed between the Nordic countries studied. Whilst Norwegian universities do file fewer patent applications, as compared to universities in the other Nordic countries, this appears to align with total Norwegian-derived EP patent filings more generally.  Start-ups in Norway appear readily willing to seek to commercialise university-derived IP at the EPO, and to a greater extent than start-ups in other Nordic countries. Providing the EPO looks at this data again in the future, it will be interesting to see what patent filing trends or differences may be observed henceforth between the Nordic country's universities.