While the number of European patent applications continues to rise, the number actually granted fell last year, the European Patent Office said Wednesday.

The EPO received 218,200 patent filings, up from 210,600 in 2006, a rise of just less than 4%. But the number of patents granted fell 12.9% to 54,700 from 62,800 the previous year. (Read a story about IBM continued to lead in U.S. patents issues.)

EPO president Alison Brimelow said the decline in the number of approved patents is "a step in the right direction," and reflects the EPO's efforts to concentrate on quality, rather than quantity.

"Large patent numbers are not necessarily indicative of growing R&D activity. What we therefore need is not more patents, but more good patents. The EPO aims to make sure that the patents it grants are relevant," she said in a statement.

Putting the emphasis on quality over quantity in the granting of European patents is "a key strategy for safeguarding the proper functioning of the European patent system," she said.

Computing accounted for 6.4% of all applications last year, making it the third most active field after medical technology and electrical communications. However, this proportion of the total was smaller than in 2006.

Meanwhile, the related field of information storage, which has seen a flood of applications in recent years, saw its share of total filings drop by 18% last year.

Surprisingly, the proportion of patent applications in the field of vehicle technology rose a modest 0.3%, in spite of the threat of global warming, and the increasingly urgent need to reduce CO₂ emissions.

The proportion of patent applications originating from the 32 member states of the European Patent Organization remained roughly stable at just less than half of all applications received by the Munich-based body.

Germany as usual topped the table with 25,176 applications, or 17.9% of the total number of filings, followed by France with 8,328 (5.9%) and the Netherlands with 6,999 applications (5%).

Filings from most EPO countries continued to rise last year, especially from the Nordic countries. Finnish inventors filed 2,045 applications -- a 22% rise from the previous year, while their Swedish counterparts filed 2,733 applications -- a rise of 7.3%.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.