Chapter 6: Science & Engineering Indicators 93
Patents by Patent Office Classes
(Click here for footnote 39.)
A country's distribution of patents by technical area provides a key to understanding that country's contribution to important fields of technology. This section compares and discusses the various key
technical fields favored by inventors from various countries in their U.S. patenting.
Footnote 39:
Information in this section is based on the Patent and Trademark Office's classification system which divides patents into approximately 370 active classes. Using this system, patent activity for U.S. and foreign
inventors in recent years can be compared by developing an activity index. This index measures a country's patenting activity within a given class. For any given year, the activity index is the proportion of patents in a particular class granted to
inventors in a specific country divided by the proportion of all patents granted to inventors in that country.
Because U.S. patenting data reflect a much larger share of patenting by individuals without corporate or government affiliation than do data on foreign patenting, only patents granted to corporations are used to construct the U.S. patenting activity
indexes.
Contents
SearchContinue