Patent applications, nonresidents
- World total
- 904,185
- across 121 countries, 2021
- Latest observation
- 2021
- Source updated
- 13 Jul 2026
- CountryAtlas refreshed
- 11 Sep 2026
- Snapshot 20260911T072322Z
World map
One value per country for the selected year. Hatched = no data.
- 1 – 11
- 11 – 29
- 29 – 186
- 186 – 567
- 567 – 6,522
- 6,522 – 329,229
- No data
Trend
Aggregate across the countries of a group, year by year. Computed by CountryAtlas from country values — no published aggregate is used.
Not enough countries to aggregate this indicator for World.
Highest and lowest
The five leaders and the five trailing countries, 2021.
Highest 5
- 329,229
- 159,019
- 66,748
- 51,753
- 35,306
Source: World Bank — WDI · IP.PAT.NRES
Lowest 5
- 117Tonga2
- 118Iceland2
- 119Albania1
- 120Estonia1
- 121Cabo Verde1
Source: World Bank — WDI · IP.PAT.NRES
Compare countries
Pick up to five countries. Defaults to the three largest economies with data.
Definition
- Definition
- Unit
- applications
- Frequency
- Annual
- Aggregation
- sum · No direction
- Valid range
- 0 – ∞
Sources & provenance
Every value on this page comes from one of these series, chosen per country by priority.
- Priority #1Open at source168 countries · 4,181 obs. · → 2021 · CC BY 4.0
Patent applications are worldwide patent applications filed through the Patent Cooperation Treaty procedure or with a national patent office for exclusive rights for an invention--a product or process that provides a new way of doing something or offers a new technical solution to a problem. A patent provides protection for the invention to the owner of the patent for a limited period, generally 20 years. Source: WIPO Patent Report: Statistics on Worldwide Patent Activity, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), note: The International Bureau of WIPO assumes no responsibility with respect to the transformation of these data.
Series-level selection: for each country the whole series comes from the highest-priority source that has any non-forecast value for it. If a lower-priority source is more than three years fresher, the freshest source wins instead. Non-chosen values are kept as alternatives, never discarded.
Countries without data
97 of 218 countries have no value for 2021.
- Nigeria
- Ethiopia
- DR Congo
- Tanzania
- Myanmar
- Sudan
- Iraq
- Afghanistan
- Angola
- Ghana
- Côte d'Ivoire
- Cameroon
- Nepal
- Venezuela
- Niger
- North Korea
- Mali
- Burkina Faso
- Taiwan
- Malawi
- Chad
- Kazakhstan
- Somalia
- Senegal
- 73 more
Typical reasons: the source does not survey small territories or micro-states; the statistical office reports with a lag of one to three years; the series is only compiled for member countries of the source organisation (OECD, EU, Eurostat); or a value exists but failed validation and is quarantined rather than shown.
Downloads & API
Every observation for this indicator, all countries and years, with provenance columns.
API example
One country, full history. Replace CAN by any ISO3 code or slug.
curl -s "https://www.countryatlas.co/api/v1/series?country=CAN&indicator=patent-applications-nonresidents" | jq '.series[0] | {country: .country.name, unit, last: .stats.last, source: .provenance.source_name}'