The European Patent Office (EPO) has published its 2010 patent filing statistics, and records have been broken. The EPO received 235,000 patent filings which is an 11% increase over 2009, and sets the records as the most patents files in the EPO’s 34 year history.

EPO President Benoît Battistelli states: "The figures are clear: growth is back. In 2010 there was an increase in demand for patent protection from every region of the world. After a two-year slump the EU and US are nearly back to their levels of patenting of before the crisis. This combined with a massive rise in patent applications from Asia - led by China - has made 2010 a record year at the EPO."

Electronic devices, Chemical engineering, and network data companies lead the top patent applicants with Siemens applying for 2135, Phillips at 1765, BASF at 1707, Samsung at 1691, and Qualcomm at 1682 patent applications.

The EPO has provided its data in excel format for evaluation on the EPO 2010 Patent Statistics Page