§ Mr. Hoyleasked the Secretary of State for Industry how many new patents were issued in the scientific field to the 10 399W largest United Kingdom industrial companies, to the eleventh to fiftieth largest United Kingdom industrial companies and to the fifty-first to three-hundredth largest United Kingdom industrial companies.
§ Mr. Clinton DavisI have been asked to reply.
I regret that some of the information requested is either not available or can only be obtained at disproportionate cost. As on average over 97 per cent. of accepted patent applications become patents they give a good indication of the incidence of patents. The table below gives the number of applications accepted between 18th February and 15th September 1976 and in the names of the largest 10, the next largest 40 and the next largest 250 United Kingdom companies as classified by sales at pages 224–226 of the 1975 edition of "Europe's 5000 Largest Companies". The numbers quoted do not include applications in the
Overseas Trade Statistics basis £ million 1973 1974 1975 June-October 1975 June-October 1976 Exports fob … … … 360 638 1,185 993 1,311 Imports cif … … … 933 2,759 2,397 2,051 2,655 Crude Balance … … … -573 -2,121 -1,212 -1,058 -1,344