The UK is the European leader in patent applications in the field of generative AI – but Germany is catching up.
This is based on new data from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a UN agency that tracks patents.
WIPO today published a report on 54,000 GenAI inventions from the decade up to 2023. Over 25% of them were created in the last year alone.
The results show that China has a big lead in this area. Over the course of the decade, the country filed over 38,000 GenAI patents, a whopping six times more than the United States, which came in second with 6,276 patents.
The top 5 are rounded off by the Republic of Korea (4,155 patents), Japan (3,409) and India (1,350).
With 714 patents, the UK ranks sixth, surpassing Germany with 708 patents. In recent years, however, Germany has filed more patent applications than its European rival.
Europe's GenAI inventions
The European company with the most patent applications in the field of artificial intelligence is also based in Germany: Siemens.
The Munich-based company has numerous patent families based on image and video data. The company ranks 16th in the global rankings.
There are now several world-leading GenAI research companies in the UK. The University of Oxford, UCL, Imperial College London and the University of Cambridge are all among the top 20 institutions with the highest scientific publications. No other European institution made it onto this list.
It is noteworthy that Google's parent company Alphabet is the only company in the top 20. The technology giant ranks fourth behind the Chinese Academy of Sciences with 556 publications. Tsinghua University and Stanford University.
However, when it comes to citations, Alphabet is the clear leader. The company had over 47,000 citations for its GenAI publications – almost twice as many as the University of California, Berkeley in second place.
Great Britain is also well represented in the citation rankings. DeepMind, Imperial and UCL all made it into the top 20. Again, no other European companies are represented in this list.
However, there is a third location on the continent among the top inventor locations: France ranks 10th with 305 patent applications.
Chinese institutions performed relatively poorly in citing GenAI publications. Image credit: WIPO
Global AI movements
Although their total numbers are small compared to China's, Europe's leading trio has a strong record in per capita terms.
According to WIPO, every country can benefit from the new data.
“This can help policymakers shape the development of GenAI for our mutual benefit and ensure that we continue to put people at the heart of our innovation and creative ecosystems,” said Daren Tang, the agency’s director general.
“We are confident that the report will help innovators, researchers and others navigate the rapidly evolving landscape of generative AI and its impact on the world.”
