Thuringia remains the state where tinkerers with inventive spirit are successfully active: In terms of patent applications per capita, the Free State ranked first last year compared with the other East German states. As the German Patent and Trademark Office in Munich reports, Thuringia also performed better than some West German federal states.
Overall, Thuringia had 24 patent applications per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023. The Free State thus clearly surpassed its neighbor Saxony, which had 13. The gap to the other East German states, which recorded patent applications in the single digits, was even larger. Thuringia also ranked ahead of West German states such as Rhineland-Palatinate and Schleswig-Holstein, which reported 15 and 13 applications per 100,000 inhabitants, respectively. Experts attribute Thuringia's remarkable performance to the fact that significant expertise and potential have existed for decades in the economic and technology sectors of optics and medical technology. Overall, in 2023, companies, research institutions, and individual inventors nationwide filed 38,469 patents, an increase of 3.4 percent compared to the previous year. (hw)
