Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) has secured the 36th position among European public research institutions for European patent applications filed in 2025, with a total of 45 applications. This places VUB on the third place among all Belgian universities.
The ranking comes from the European Patent Office's (EPO) new Data Desk dashboard, released as part of a comprehensive landmark study on technology transfer conducted in collaboration with ASTP and Fraunhofer ISI. The study analysed data and survey responses from over 800 European Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs) to benchmark research commercialisation across the continent.
The findings highlight Belgium's strong deeptech landscape, ranking the country 9th in Europe for university spin-offs filing European patents, with 189 active companies identified. The study also reveals that more than half of these Belgian spin-offs are currently in an early growth stage, underscoring the critical role of technology transfer in moving discoveries from the lab into viable market solutions.