The Chinese manufacturer BYD has already strongly consolidated its position in the European market and has become the brand with the fastest-growing sales of electric and plug-in hybrid cars in the Spanish market during the first half of 2025, with a spectacular year-on-year growth of 700% thanks to having registered a total of 12,353 cars in Spain.

Catalan companies and inventors filed 724 patent applications with the European Patent Office (EPO) in 2024, according to the 2024 Patent Index published this Tuesday. Although the Principality experienced a slight decrease of 1% compared to the previous year, it continued to lead the ranking, representing 33% of the state's total, followed by the Community of Madrid, with 413 applications, and the Basque Country, with 326, with 244. Thus, the two cities are among the 50 European cities with the most European patent applications. San Sebastián remains in the top 3, with 81 applications. At the provincial level, Barcelona once again leads the number of applications, with 643, compared to Girona, with 42 (representing a 55.5% increase compared to the 27 the previous year), Tarragona, with 23, and Lleida, with 16.

Barcelona's Court of Appeal ended up ruling in favour of German supermarket chain Lidl in its litigation against Vorwerk, a German appliance company which developed the Thermomix food processor. The court upheld Lidl's appeal and overturned a previous judgment that found that the supermarket chain had plagiarised its food processor, Monsieur Cuisine Connect, directly from Thermomix.

The director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has urged countries to manufacture their own vaccines by waiving patents, to combat the shortage of doses. The head of the UN agency recalls that countries that have the capacity to manufacture vaccines can ignore patents, a possibility provided for by the World Trade Organization (WTO) in emergency situations. In this sense, he welcomes the initiative raised by South Africa and India before the WTO to waive patents on vaccines, treatments and other medical products for covid-19 until the end of the pandemic.