Terms A-Z

Patents relevant to the world market are international patent applications for inventions filed with the World Intellectual ... Property Organization (WIPO), supplemented by applications filed with the European Patent Office (EPO), excluding double counting.

The percentage of first-year students (first enrolment) in any given year group is an important indicator for higher education ... planning.

The number of people qualified to enter higher education as a percentage of the relevant age group is calculated on the basis ... of the average figure for 17-to-under-20-year-olds (in Länder with 12 years of schooling) or 18-to-under-21-year-olds (in Länder with 13 years of schooling) among residents with and without German nationality.

This refers to the share of school-leavers qualified to enter higher education in any given year group who have already started ... a degree course or have the firm intention of starting one. It is calculated on the basis of a representative survey by Hochschul-Informations-System GmbH. In addition to this group (people with a firm intention of pursuing higher education), people who are not yet sure about going to university or are considering it as an alternative can also be factored in. A maximum percentage is calculated in this way.

In national reporting, this sector includes non-profit organizations mainly financed by government (e.g. the Helmholtz Association ... of German Research Centres (HGF), the Max Planck Society (MPG) or the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft (FhG)) and private non-profit organizations financed neither mainly by the government nor mainly by the private sector and not primarily serving business enterprises.

Process innovations are new or significantly improved production processes, service delivery methods, logistics methods, ... information processing methods, supporting methods for administration, methods for organising business processes and external relations, methods of work organisation, and marketing methods that have been implemented within an enterprise and differ significantly from the methods previously used by the enterprise.

Product innovations are new or significantly improved products or services that an enterprise has introduced to the market ... and that differ significantly from the products or services previously offered by the enterprise.

Project funding provided by the federal ministries is awarded through funding or specialised programmes on the basis of an ... application for a fixed-term project. In addition to individual projects, collaborative projects involving multiple partners are also funded. Federal project funding is provided within the legal and policy framework established at the European and national levels.