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Knowledge4Policy
Knowledge for policy
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  • Dataset | 07 Jul 2016
Patent applications to the EPO by priority year by International Patent Classification (IPC) sections and classes
Bioeconomy Knowledge Centre

Number of patents application to the European Patent Office (EPO) by priority year at the national level by International Patent Classification (IPC) sections and classes, expressed in absolute numbers, per million inhabitants and per million of active population.

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.

Million inhabitants refer to the population the 1st of January each year, and the main source is the Eurostat collection of Population. Main source for the million labour force figures is the European Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS).