The primary aim of this paper is to deliver empirical evidence on the relative innovative capacity of German regions on the NUTS 3-level. Special attention is devoted to the question of whether East German regions, in fact, still perform worse in terms of innovation activity. We find rural regions to be systematically less innovative than urban areas. However, we only find a slight difference between East and West German regions when controlling for the regional sector structure. Thus, given the prevailing industrial structure there is little difference between East and West German innovative capacity.