Patent applications, residents
- World total
- 2.29M
- across 113 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.
No data available
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
- 1.43M
- 262,244
- 222,452
- 186,245
- 39,822
Source: World Bank — WDI · IP.PAT.RESD
Lowest 5
- 2
- 110Brunei2
- 111Cyprus1
- 112Cabo Verde1
- 113Samoa1
Source: World Bank — WDI · IP.PAT.RESD
Compare countries
Pick up to five countries. Defaults to the three largest economies with data.
No series for the selected countries.
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 source158 countries · 3,856 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
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-residents" | jq '.series[0] | {country: .country.name, unit, last: .stats.last, source: .provenance.source_name}'