Portugal Filed a Record 1,170 Patent Applications in 2025, the Most in a Decade

Portugal filed a record number of invention patents last year, a rare piece of unambiguously good news for a country that has long punched below its weight in turning research into protected intellectual property. National patent applications reached 1,170 in 2025, up 22.9% on the 952 filed in 2024 and the highest figure in a decade, according to the INPI (Instituto Nacional da Propriedade Industrial, the national institute of industrial property).

The jump matters because patents are a proxy for whether an economy's ideas ever make it out of the laboratory. Portugal produces strong academic research but has historically struggled to commercialise it; a double-digit rise in filings suggests more of that work is being claimed, protected and — potentially — licensed or spun into companies.

The numbers behind the record

Beyond the headline total, the detail is encouraging. European patents of Portuguese origin rose 6.1% to 368, up from 347 the year before, showing that inventors are increasingly seeking protection across borders rather than only at home. A further 122 applications used the unitary European patent system, which secures rights across 18 EU states in a single filing — an 18.4% increase that points to companies thinking about the whole single market from the outset.

Notably, 34% of applications listed at least one woman inventor, a share that speaks to a gradually broadening research base. Geographically, the north of the country led with 37% of national filings, ahead of Greater Lisbon on 26% and the central region on 22%. Among individual institutions, the University of Coimbra (Universidade de Coimbra) filed more national applications than any other Portuguese entity, underlining the role of academia as the country's innovation engine.

What This Means for Expats

• A friendlier base for founders. Rising filings and heavy use of the unitary patent make Portugal a more credible place to build and protect a technology venture.
• University spin-outs are multiplying. If you work in research or deep tech, institutions such as Coimbra are active filers and potential partners.
• Protection is getting cheaper to scale. The single unitary filing covering 18 countries lowers the cost of guarding an invention across Europe.
• The north is the innovation heartland. Porto and its universities account for the largest slice of filings, reinforcing the region's tech pull.

One record year does not close Portugal's innovation gap with northern Europe, where filings per capita remain far higher. But the trend lines are pointing the right way, and they arrive as the state pours money into the same goal — from a €182.5 million productive-innovation grant call to Portugal's belated entry into the EU's €15 billion tech-champions fund. Home-grown technology is also finding public buyers, as when the Navy deployed the domestically built Amália AI. The task now is to convert a record crop of patents into companies, jobs and exports before the ideas migrate elsewhere.