Czechs lodge 6,848 patent applications in 10 years

Prague, Sept 9 (CTK) - Czechs put in 6,848 patent applications between 2002 and 2011 and the Industrial Property Office (UPV) granted 2,904 patents and recorded 10,624 industrial patterns over the period, statisticians said in the September issue of the statistical magazine Statistika&My.

"The average patent process period was 3.3 years for Czech applicants," the Czech Statistical Office (CSU) said.

"The Czech success rate is some 47 percent, which means that a patent has been granted for a half of inventions for which a patent application had been filed," the CSU said.

The application numbers have been steadily rising since the year 2008 in case of patents, while for industrial patterns the figure has been growing since 2006 already.

The patent process lasted an average 2.3 years for public universities, their success rate at 88 percent.

The success rate for public research institutions was 86 percent in less than three years.

"The rate of probability for a Czech company to be granted a patent for an invention was 61 percent and the patent procedure lasted 3.3 years on average," the CSU said in the report.

Natural persons show a very low success rate of less than one third, the patent process lasting more than 3.5 years.

The country registered a total of 1,998 valid patents of domestic applicants at the end of last year, 1,094 being companies, 372 natural persons, 285 public universities and 215 public research institutions.

The number of granted patents is likely to grow in the years ahead, the CSU said.