The capability of the EU R&D scoreboard companies to develop advanced manufacturing technologies

In this report the first results obtained from data provided by Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI) in the context of the Advanced Manufacturing for Competitiveness project are presented. The aims of this project are to develop and test a methodology based on patent analysis to assess the capacity of the EU Industrial R&D Scoreboard companies to develop advanced manufacturing technologies (AMTs) and key enabling technologies (KETs) which are expected to have a major impact on productivity, efficiency, profitability and employment in the major industrial sectors. The companies listed in the EU Industrial R&D Scoreboard hold a dominant position in KET and AMT filings accounting for about 61 % of total KET filings and 57 % of total AMT filings in 2011. European companies hold almost 50 % of the AMT worldwide patent filings and about 50 % of these are held by Germany headquartered companies. Japanese companies are responsible for 27 % of AMT filings worldwide and US companies for about 24 % of all transnational AMT patents. In KETs Japanese companies dominate the scene, followed by Europe and the USA. Developing and patenting AMTs and KETs seems to have become more expensive over the time period under study, as shown by the decrease in the average patent intensity since 2004. Although R&D expenditures and numbers of patent filings are significantly positively correlated with the number of employees, larger firms have lower patent intensities than smaller ones. In addition the patent intensity is higher in industry than in the service sector and European firms have the highest patent intensities, followed by companies in North America, Asia and the rest of the world. This correlation is also observed in the case of firms that file AMT patents; thus larger firms are filing more AMT patents than smaller ones