08/03/2018 (Agence Europe) – During the presentation of its Annual Report 2017 on Wednesday 7 March, the European Patents Office (EPO) said that it had received nearly 166,000 European patent applications in 2017. In a press release, the EPO welcomed the fact that this represents “an increase of 3.9% and an all-time high”. The EPO also said that it had published some 106,000 granted European patents in 2017, up 10.1% on the previous year. At an economic level, the majority of major member states increased requests, except for Belgium. Switzerland remains the country per capita that submits the most requests for patents. This is good news for the EPO which said that it was the best patents office among the five biggest patents offices in the world (see EUROPE 11806). Please see the following link to access this report: http://bit.ly/2oTvStk. (PH)