Country income groups
This report uses the World Bank income classification to refer to particular country groups. The classification is based on gross national income per capita in 2018 and establishes the following four groups: low-income economies (USD 1,135 or less); lower middle-income economies (USD 1,136 to USD 4,465); upper middle-income economies (USD 4,466 to USD 13,845); and high-income economies (USD 13,846 or more).
More information on this classification is available at: http://data.worldbank.org/about/country-classifications.
Country region groups
The country regions used in this report are closely based on the geographic regions from the Standard Country or Area Codes for Statistics Use, 1999 (Revision 4) known as M49 and published by the Statistics Division (UNDS) of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations (UN). The full methodology can be found at unstats.un.org. To simplify the analysis, some changes are introduced to this methodology. These are the following: Western Europe includes Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and United Kingdom. Central and Eastern Europe includes all countries in the M49’s Northern and Southern Europe regions not included in Western Europe. The geographical subregions Southern Asia, Central Asia and Southeastern Asia are grouped in one category, which also includes Mongolia.
Scientific publication data
The scientific publication data used in this report comes from Open Alex. Open Alex is a catalog of 474 million scholarly works, which links to authors, institutions, funders and other related information.
More information on Open Alex is available at:https://openalex.org/.
Patent data
The patent data used in this report are from the European Patent Office’s (EPO) Worldwide Patent Statistical Database (PATSTAT, autumn 2025 edition).
The main unit of analysis is the first filing for a set of patent applications filed in one or more countries and claiming the same invention. Each set containing one first and, potentially, several subsequent filings that refer to the same identical priority is defined as a patent family.
The analysis focuses only on foreign-oriented patent families. Foreign-oriented patent families concern those inventions for which the applicant has sought patent protection beyond its home patent office.
Mapping strategies
The mapping strategy for each of the case studies – agricultural technologies and clean technologies – is based on prior studies and expert suggestions. Each strategy was compared to existing alternative sources whenever possible.
The patent mapping strategies are based on a combination of patent classifications – namely, the International Patent Classification (IPC) and/or the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) – and keywords searched for in PATSTAT data. The production mapping strategies are based on the categories from the Standard International Trade Classification (SITC) version 3.
A brief description of the two strategies follows:
Agricultural technologies
The agricultural technologies patent mapping is based on the combination of CPC and IPC symbol of “A01".
Clean technologies
The clean technologies mapping cover technologies related to combustion and engine control, exhaust gas treatment, waste and wastewater management, materials processing and recycling, chemical and biological treatment processes, energy conversion and storage, environmental monitoring, and supporting mechanical, hydraulic, and infrastructure systems.
The relevant IPC class symbols include F02D/41, F02D/43, F02M/23, F02M/25, F02M/27, F23J/15, F23B/80, F23C/09, F23C/10, F02D/45, F02P/05, B01D/46, B01D/47, B01D/49, B01D/50, B01D/51, B03C/03, F01N/03, F01N/05, F01N/07, F01N/09, F01N/11, F01N/13, B63J/04, C05F/01, C05F/05, C05F/07, C05F/09, C05F/17, E01H/15, B22F/08, B29B/07, B29B/17, B30B/09, B62D/67, B65H/73, B65D/65, C02F, C03B/01, C03C/06, C04B/07, C04B/11, C04B/18, C04B/33, C05F, C08J/11, C09K/03, C09K/11, C10G/01, C10L/05, C10L/10, C10M/175, C12N/15, C21B/07, C21C/05, C22B/07, C22B/19, C22B/25, D01G/11, D21B/01, D21C/05, D21H/17, E01H, E02B/15, E03B/01, E03B/03, E03B/05, E03B/09, E03B/11, E03C/01, E03D/01, E03D/03, E03D/05, E03D/13, E03F, F01D/11, F01K/23, F01M/13, F02B/47, F02D/21, F02M/03, F02M/31, F16K/21, F16L/55, F23G/05, F23G/07, F27B/01, G01M/15, G08B/21, H01B/15, H01J/09, H01M/06, H01M/10, A01G/25, A23K/01, A43B/01, A43B/21, A47K/11, A61L/11, B01J/23, B03B/09, B09B, B09C, B63B/35, and B65F.