Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what estimate he has made of the proportion of global patents for graphene that is held in the UK.

The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) estimates that 5% of global graphene patent documents published between 2005 and 2014 have coverage in the UK (in that they are applications to the IPO or the European Patent Office (EPO) with effect in the UK, but were not necessarily filed by UK applicants).

In the same period, UK applicants were responsible for filing 1% of published global graphene patent applications worldwide.