Dutch companies have been submitting fewer patent applications to the European patent office since the top year of 2005, the Financieele Dagblad reports on Thursday.

In 2011, patent applications fell by 13% compared with 2010 and have fallen 30% since 2005, the paper says. In 2005, the Netherlands was fifth in the list of companies submitting the most applications but has since been overtaken by South Korea, China, Switzerland and Britain.
Patent applications are seen as an important measure of how innovative a country or company is. ‘The Netherlands is not on the up, but going downhill fast,’ Hans Hutter, a partner in advice agency Nederlandsch Octrooibureau, told the paper.
The main reason for the decline is the lessening importance of companies such as Philips, which made almost 5,000 patent applications in 2005, the FD says. Last year, Philips submitted fewer than 2,000. This, the paper says, is largely due to the company’s shift in focus from consumer electronics to medical apparatus and lighting.