As was reported today in Munich by Dr. Jürgen Schade, chairman of the German Patent and Trade Mark Office, on the occasion of their annual press conference, Germany is leading with regard to patent applications. In the year 2006 out of 60.500 patent applications for technical inventions 12.500 were submitted from abroad (+6%) and 48.000 came from within Germany (-7%). Despite the slight decrease in patent applications from within Germany the situation in this respect is said to be quite a stable one.
The most innovative fields are car manufacturing (almost 5 500 applications), mechanical engineering (about 4 500 applications) and the field of measuring and control instruments (about 4 000 applications).
Almost three quarters of all applications are submitted from Bavaria, Baden-Wurttemberg and North Rhine-Westphalia. For each 100.000 there are 58 patents being applied for in Germany. Baden-Wurttemberg and Bayern are well above this average figure with 125 and 113 patent applications respectively, whereas all the other Federal States are below this average. 
Further reports in the Blog to the innovation strength: