They still exist, the free inventors. As a rule, they are men, often mechanical engineers by profession and at home in southern Germany.
In times of increasingly complex technology, the importance of independent inventors for technical development continues to decline. Last year, inventors independent of companies submitted 1,835 new technical developments, as the German Patent and Trademark Office announced before the Nuremberg Inventors Fair (October 26-28). The share of independent inventors in all patent applications from Germany fell to 5.1 percent. In 2022 it was 5.9 percent, and at the end of the 1990s it was over ten percent.
Companies file the most patents
The patent office counted free applications “from” and not “in” Germany, as the Munich authority traditionally also receives a number of patent applications from abroad. The vast majority of inventions and technical developments are registered by companies. Electrical engineering companies such as Siemens and Bosch as well as the automotive industry are traditionally well represented. The federal authority counts those inventors who register a new development in their own name as independent inventors.
Female inventors in the minority
Just as with patent applications as a whole, southern Germany is also overrepresented in free inventions: around a quarter come from Bavaria (470), North Rhine-Westphalia is in second place (363), before Baden-Württemberg (307) comes back in third place southern German state follows. A significant proportion of independent inventors are obviously active in mechanical engineering or a related profession: almost 41 percent of registrations were in this branch. Women are still only a minority, although their proportion rose to 8.7 percent last year.
Patent Office: Free inventors remain important
“Every creative mind is an enrichment,” says DPMA President Eva Schewior. The head of the authority referred to well-known free inventions of the past such as the expansion dowel, which was applied for a patent in 1958 by the Baden entrepreneur Artur Fischer and which has become established worldwide.
Source: Stern
