PATENT STATISTICS ON THE WORLD TEXTILE INDUSTRY AND A LOOK AT GERMANY'S POSITION

Abstract

Some studies suggest that the number of patent applications can be used as an indicator to quantify the potential for innovation of industry sectors such as the textile industry. This paper shows the distribution of worldwide economic power and patent applications be-tween 1978 and 2004 in the textile and textile machinery industry based on the example of Germany. The number of patent applications from the textile sector is compared to that of other industries. Subsequently, the patent statistics are broken down into individ-ual enterprises with outstanding numbers of applications, as well as to individual coun-tries and branches within the textile industry.