Medtech Innovation Is Going Digital But Is Patent Protection Keeping Up?

The medtech sector has remained at the forefront of innovation during the pandemic with a multitude of new technologies being developed to help tackle the coronavirus crisis, from modified ventilators to lateral flow test kits. This can be seen in the data recently published by the European Patent Office which indicates that there has been an upsurge in patent filing activity within the medtech field. The European Patent Office's Patent Index 2020 shows that there have been 14,295 medical technology patent filings at the European Patent Office in 2020, which is up 2.6% from the previous year. Interestingly, although the medical technology field leads the way by volume of European patent filings in 2020, it has been the neighbouring pharmaceutical and biotechnology fields that have seen the strongest growth in European patent filings with 8,589 filings (up 10.2% from 2019) and 7,246 filings (up 6.3% from 2019) respectively. Much of this growth is likely to have