A.1 Methodology for patent analysis
Patent identification and mapping to a definition
Transforming a technology definition into a patent data collection is a crucial step when undertaking patent analysis. The most relevant aspect is the method of finding patents that fit the definition. The approach used in this report followed established guidelines, such as those provided by WIPO,
Data collection and patent counting
Simple patent families are counted as a proxy for individual inventions in the report. A simple patent family is a set of patents in various countries that relate to a single invention. The technical content covered is considered to be identical. All patent documents have the same priority date or combination of priority dates. The first publication by a member of a patent family counts as the publication year.
Most analysis in the report refers to numbers of patent families. Only published patent families have been studied.
Patent families generally include only patents and not utility models, without assessing their legal status.
The origin of the inventor (inventor’s location or residence) is used as a proxy for the source of innovations. For patents with multiple inventors, we count the different locations listed and count the location for multiple inventors of the same origin once.
Utility models have been excluded from the patent analysis in this report because the regional differences and lower inventive threshold for utility models can affect the accuracy and relevance of the analysis.
A.2 Patent indicators
Patent application
To obtain a patent, an application must be filed at the appropriate intellectual property (IP) office with all the necessary documents and fees. The IP office will conduct an examination to decide whether to grant or reject the application. Patent applications are generally published 18 months after the earliest priority date of the application. Prior to that publication, the application remains confidential.
Patent classification
Patent classification is a system that allows examiners of IP offices or other people to code documents, such as published patent applications, according to the technical features of their content. The International Patent Classification (IPC) is agreed internationally. The European Patent Office (EPO) and United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) launched a joint project to create the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) in order to harmonize the patent classifications systems between the two offices.
Patent applicant/owner
Patents are filed by an applicant, which can be an organization or a natural person. Applicants are not inventors, even if sometimes they are similar. The applicant is, in most jurisdictions and in most cases, published with the patent and always remains the applicant. The applicant is not automatically the owner of a patent at a given time, even if that is often the case. Patents can be transferred or sold, or the applicant itself can be sold as a company in a merger or takeover. Therefore, the “owner” of a patent might change over time and is not always published. For proper analysis, to consolidate incorrect spelling and to include merger and acquisition information in the analysis, the report used the ultimate owner concept in the IFI Claims global patent database. The most probable entity was then named as owner.
Patent family
A patent family is a collection of patent applications covering the same or similar technical content and all sharing one or more priority documents. Families are used to count inventions, rather than several patents corresponding to the same subject matter filed in different jurisdictions. There are several definitions of patent families, including simple and extended patent families, depending on the number of priority documents shared (ranging from one to all priority documents). Patent family members are the individual patents filed in those jurisdictions where a patent applicant is seeking patent protection (e.g., WIPO, EPO) and all publications in relation to these. In the present study, we counted simple patent families (using a representative patent family member for each patent family), unless otherwise specified.
Granted patent
Once examined by the IP office, an application becomes a granted patent or is rejected. If granted, the patent gives its owner a temporary right, for a limited time period (normally 20 years), to prevent unauthorized use of the technology outlined in the patent. The procedure for granting patents varies widely between locations in accordance with national laws and international agreements. Note that in the same patent family, an application can be granted in one location and rejected in another.
Inventor country/location
The origin of the inventor (inventor’s location or residence) is used as a proxy for the source of innovation. For patents with multiple inventors, we counted the different locations listed and counted the location for multiple inventors of the same origin once. If no inventor address was available, the patent priority country/location was used as a proxy for the source of innovation.
Priority country/location
The priority country/location is the first location in which a particular invention has a patent application filed, also known as the office of first filing.
Filing country/location
The filing country/location is the legal jurisdiction in which a member of a patent family filed a patent application to seek patent protection.
PCT (WO patent)
The Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) is an international patent law treaty concluded in 1970, administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), between more than 140 Paris Convention locations. The PCT makes it possible to seek patent protection for an invention simultaneously in each of a large number of locations by filing a single “international” patent application instead of filing several separate national or regional patent applications. The granting of patents remains under the control of the national or regional patent offices, a stagere ferred to as the “national phase.”
European patent (EP patent)
A European patent can be obtained for all the European Patent Convention (EPC) locations by filing a single application at the EPO. European patents granted by the EPO have the same legal rights and are subject to the same conditions as national patents (granted by a national patent office). A granted European patent is a “bundle” of national patents that must be validated at the national patent office to be effective in member locations. The validation process could include submission of a translation of the specification, payment of fees and other formalities at the national patent office. Once a European patent is granted, competence is transferred to the national patent offices. Other regional patents or procedures also exist: the Eurasian patent (EA), African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) patent (AP) for English-speaking Africa and African Intellectual Property Organization (OAPI) patent (OA) for French-speaking Africa.
International patent family
An international patent family is defined as a patent family that has been filed and published in two or more jurisdictions (sometimes also known as foreign-oriented patent families or extended patent families). This contrasts with a domestic-only patent family or a non-international patent family, which consists of a patent family filed in only a single jurisdiction (often known as a “singleton”).
WIPO Patent Momentum Indicator
The WIPO Patent Momentum Indicator (PMI) is a data-driven metric that captures the pace and intensity of innovation in global patenting, helping to identify fast-evolving technologies across industries. Developed to highlight technology areas of interest by analyzing both the volume and the growth rate of patenting activities, PMI offers insights into the momentum of patenting activity, making it a valuable metric for stakeholders interested in tracking technological advancements.
Calculation steps:
Patent activity level
Calculate the average annual number of patent families for each technology trend–modality combination from 2018 to 2023.
Normalize these values using a Z-score.
Patent activity dynamics
Determine the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of patent families for each combination over the same period.
Normalize the growth rates using a Z-score.
Total patent momentum score
Combine the normalized scores from the activity level and dynamics to obtain a total score for each trend–modality combination.
Relative Specialization Index
The Relative Specialization Index (RSI) compares the published patenting activity in two or more locations within the same technology area. RSI is a measure of a location’s share of patent families in a particular field of technology as a fraction of that location’s share of patent families in all fields of technology. It accounts for the fact that some locations file more patent applications than others in all fields of technology.
In other words, RSI has the advantage of providing a comparison of two locations’ patenting activity in a technology relative to those locations’ overall patenting activity. The effect of this is to highlight locations that have a greater specialism in the technology area studied than would be expected from their overall level of patenting, and which might otherwise appear further down the top inventor location lists, and often go unnoticed. A positive RSI value indicates that a location has a higher specialization in a specific field than would be expected, while a negative value indicates a lower specialization than expected for that location.
The RSI is calculated as follows:
A.3 Patent searches
Full details of the patent search strategies used to define the technology areas analyzed in this report can be accessed and downloaded from the WIPO website.