1 in 7 inventions in Germany, by immigrants - Study: They are increasingly contributing to the country's development
According to the Institute for German Economics (IW), an increasing number of patents in Germany come from people with a foreign background. In 2022, approximately one in seven patent applications were filed by them (14%), the researchers reported.
In 2000, it was only one in twenty (4.9%). Therefore, immigrants are "increasingly important" for the German economy, the institute explained.
For the study, IW grouped the names of all inventors since 2000 into one of 24 linguistic areas. This way, "the region of origin of the individual in question can be determined with high probability."
According to the study, inventors from Eastern and Southeastern Europe contribute the most to patent registrations in Germany, with a share of almost 3%. In second place are the linguistic areas of Southern Europe and Latin America.
In third place is the Arab world, including Turkey, with around 2%. Its share has quadrupled since 2000. The growth is particularly strong among people of Indian origin: since the beginning of the millennium, patent registrations from them have increased twelvefold, currently reaching 1.2%.
"The successes in India show how other countries with a high level of education and a young society should act, in coordination with the respective country of origin, to attract more and more qualified researchers and professionals," the study says. However, recruitment and information efforts alone are not enough.
Like other industrialized countries, Germany relies on immigration of well-educated people. "To be able to compete for the best brains, fast and unbureaucratic procedures for entry to Germany and recognition of qualifications are needed," the researchers say.
An open spirit is also essential to attract experts with their knowledge and to remain attractive to foreign talent, she stressed. Overall, Germany is the second country in the world in terms of the number of registered patents, behind only the United States. In total, researchers in the Federal Republic registered around 25,000 patents last year.
The percentage of female inventors among immigrants, at almost 9%, is almost double that of Germans. Specifically, this percentage is higher in all other language areas than in the German-speaking area, especially in Eastern European language areas such as Czech (13.6%), Polish (13.2%) and Romanian (12.7%), but also in Korean and Spanish-Portuguese (11.1 each), according to IW.
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