Number of patent applications to the European Patent Office - EPO by priority year at the national level by sector of economic activity (NACE class derived through concordance with IPC) Rev. 1.1 in absolute numbers.

Patents are classified according to the International Patent Classification (IPC).

The IPC is based on an international multilateral treaty administered by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), i.e. the Strasbourg Agreement concerning the International Patent Classification.

Data broken down by sector are based on the Statistical classification of economic activities in the European Community. Please note that the conversion of IPC codes to NACE classes is not linked to the primary activity of the applicants. The sectors hence reflect the particular patent technologies and not the activity of the applicant.

Patents reflect a country's inventive activity. Patents also show the country's capacity to exploit knowledge and translate it into potential economic gains. In this context, indicators based on patent statistics are widely used to assess the inventive performance of countries.

This dataset provides users with data concerning patent applications / granted to the European Patent Office - EPO, patents granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office - USPTO and triadic patent families. EPO data refer to all patent applications by priority year as opposed to patents granted by priority year, which is the case of USPTO data.

Data collection done at the EPO and at national Patent Offices. Data compilation done at Eurostat based on PATSTAT.