manroland says it went to the top of the list for printing patent applications in 2009, a big year for innovations. Some 251 new patent applications from the press manufacturer were published by the German Patent and Trade Mark Office in 2009. This put manroland in 21st place among the 50 most active patent applicants in Germany. The figures published by the German Patent and Trade Mark Office show that the automobile and engineering industries are particularly innovative. With 251 published patent applications in 2009, manroland is number one in the printing industry again – a position it held in 2006 and 2007. The technology of the autoprint series is a major contributor to the list: The maker says the modules which help to deliover fully-automated print production are covered by numerous and comprehensive applications for intellectual property rights. Besides increasing the degree of automation through mechatronical solutions, developments last year focused on a dramatic boost in efficiency by the use of microsystem technology for intelligent components or innovative functional materials. Through radically new security features, manroland provides highly effective protection against forgeries. Additionally, new applications with integrated inkjet technologies were developed which work up to the maximum production speed of web-fed printing systems.