Chapter 6: Science & Engineering Indicators 93
International Patent Families as a Basis of Comparison
A patent family consists of all the patent documents published in different countries associated with a single invention. The first application filed anywhere in the world is the priority
application: it is assumed that the country in which the priority application was filed is the country in which the invention was developed. Similarly, the priority year is the year in which the priority application was filed. The basic
patent is the first patent or patent application published in any of the 33 countries covered in the database used in this section. This database, the World Patents Index Latest, covers basic patents published from 1981 to the present.
Counts of patent families over time as an indicator of technological activity are skewed by those countries with national patent systems that encourage large numbers of patent applications (e.g., Japan). To eliminate this bias wherever possible,
international patent families are used as a basis of comparison. An international patent family is created when patent protection is sought in at least one other country besides the one in which the earliest priority application was filed.
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