...
Patents
There were 203 patent applications filed with the IPO SR in 2012; it is decrease by 20.7 per cent in comparison with 2011. PCT applications form 6.9 per cent (14 applications) of all applications.
The number of applications filed by domestic applicants (168) decreased by 24.7 per cent and applications filed by foreign applicants (35) increased by 6.1 per cent. Poland (11), the Czech Republic (9,) Germany (6) and the U.S.A. (4) had the largest share in the total number of patent applications filed by foreign applicants (35).
161 patents were granted in 2012; it is decrease by 42.9 per cent in comparison with 2011.
From January 1, 2012 to December 31, 2012 there were 28 supplementary protection certificate applications filed. All of them were filed by foreign applicants; the most of them were from the U.S.A. - 7, and from Germany - 4; 16 supplementary protection certificates were granted in 2012.
European Patents
In 2012, 3 European patent applications were filed with the IPO SR.
2.376 translations of European patent specifications were published in 2012; it is 4.5 per cent more than in the previous year.
There were 13,390 valid patents entered in the Patent Register of the IPO SR by December 31, 2012; 3,170 of them were national patents granted; 10,220 were European patents with designation for SR.
Utility Models
There were 392 utility model applications filed with the Office in 2012. This number decreased by 8.0 per cent in comparison with the previous year. The number of applications filed by Slovak applicants decreased by 14.9 per cent (298). The share of Slovak applicants in total number of 392 applications is 76.0 per cent.
Decrease by 5.0 per cent occurred in the number of registered utility models (358).
By December 31, 2012, there were 1,689 utility models valid in the Slovak Republic.
For comparison, there is the statistics on filed patent applications, granted patents, utility model applications, registered utility models and translations of European patent specifications in 2005 - 2012:
Patentandutilitymodelstatistics_2012.docx
Trends or areas experiencing rapid changes with respect to the previous year
...