All indicators
    Technological autonomy

    International patent filings

    The filings a company makes when an invention is worth protecting across borders. Counted as filings, because one competes in world markets whatever the population behind it.

    LiveWIPO, published by the OECDUpdated annual

    Where Europe stands now

    Scientific & technological outcomes

    International patent filings

    International patent filings, the ones made when an invention is worth protecting across borders. China now files more of them than anyone, and Europe files fewer than it did relative to the field.

    EU
    46,278
    US
    55,218
    China
    67,773
    D9+
    14,850
    Europe trails the US by 1.2×WIPO / OECD · 2024

    EU vs US vs China vs D9+ over time

    Filings per year

    20032006200920122015201820212024China68kUS55kEU46kD9+15k

    Fractional counts by inventor residence, priority year. Scored on total filings; the front-page chart also shows them per million inhabitants.

    The story

    Innovation starts long before a product reaches the market, with ideas strong enough to protect. Not every invention is patented, and not every patent becomes a product, but international patent applications remain one of the clearest measures of technological output.

    This metric tracks Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applications, counted as filings. A PCT application is filed when an inventor wants protection in several markets at once, which makes it a good proxy for inventions with global commercial ambition.

    The index scores the total, because a filing competes in world markets whatever the population behind it. The per-million reading, which asks how inventive an economy is for its size, is one click away on the front-page chart. No patent number should be read in isolation, but sustained international patent activity is a strong signal that a country can generate new technologies, feed future industries and compete at the technological frontier.

    Why it matters

    Patents are one of the earliest measurable outputs of an innovation system. They come before the companies, the exports, the productivity gains and the industrial leadership.

    Countries that keep producing internationally relevant patents attract investment, feed university spin-outs and build competitive technology sectors. Regions that produce little frontier intellectual property end up depending on technology developed elsewhere.

    Patent intensity is therefore more than a score for scientific excellence. It is an early reading on where future economic value and technological leadership will be created.

    Policy context

    Europe still produces world-class research. The Draghi Report, the Competitiveness Compass and the Startup & Scaleup Strategy all reach the same diagnosis: the weakness is commercialisation. Too little of that research becomes globally competitive companies.

    Recent reforms aim at exactly this. The Unitary Patent simplifies intellectual property protection across Europe, while the Savings and Investment Union and the proposed 28th Regime target the wider conditions for scaling patented technology into businesses.

    Patent applications are the start of Europe's innovation pipeline. Their long-term value depends on whether the ideas behind them are commercialised, scaled and kept in Europe.

    How this number is calculated

    SourceOECD · WIPO PCT applications (patent authority 9P50_1)
    DefinitionApplications filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty, fractional counts by inventor residence at priority year. Scored on the total, because a filing competes in world markets whatever the population behind it; the per-million reading is on the chart.
    EU aggregationEU = the EU27 aggregate, which is exactly the member sum; fractional counting means no intra-EU double count. Population from World Bank SP.POP.TOTL.
    ComparisonEurope, the United States and China, each on the same definition and the latest available year.
    UpdatesPulled automatically from the official source and refreshed every 24 hours. No manual edits.
    CaveatWIPO's own headline uses whole counts by applicant residence at filing date. The ranking is the same.
    NotesPCT applications filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty, fractional counts by inventor residence at priority year. WIPO administers the PCT and is the source of the underlying counts; because WIPO itself publishes no reusable data files, we take the same figures from the OECD, which publishes them with the patent authority coded as WIPO. Counts are fractional by inventor country of residence, at priority year. WIPO's own headline uses whole counts by applicant residence at filing date, which gives slightly different totals but the same ranking. Fractional counting also means the EU aggregate carries no intra-EU double counting. Recent years fill in slightly as applications publish, so the numbers here are kept current rather than frozen. An earlier version of this indicator used World Bank resident patent applications as a proxy, because no openly published PCT dataset had been found. That proxy was wrong in both directions: it counted China's very large volume of domestic national filings, and it missed Europe almost entirely, since most European applicants file at the European Patent Office rather than at national offices. It reported China 5.4 times ahead of the United States per capita. On actual PCT filings China is last of the three per capita. The proxy has been removed.

    Source & cadence

    UnitFilings per year
    EU sourceWIPO, published by the OECD
    US sourceWIPO, published by the OECD
    FrequencyAnnual

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