Production & Innovation

Intellectual Property & Intangible Assets

The capacity to create, protect and monetise intangibles: examination-grade intellectual-property machinery, intangible investment across the economy and the receipts that flow when the world pays to use what the nation invented. One of the capabilities of Innovation & Commercialisation.

International families: 3.69M2015 to 2024
Leading country: Japan1.1× the next
All families: 20.8Mhome filings included
Over five years: Steady2020 to 2024 against the five before

Year by year

Patent families by country of origin and the year of the earliest filing, 2000 to 2025; 2025 is a part year, still filling in. International families are those for which protection was sought beyond one country.

Volume

International patent families in the capability, by the year of the earliest filing.

Source: Global Institute for National Capability (GINC), 2026. Underlying patents from 107 patent offices, IFI CLAIMS and Google

Share by country

Each country's share of the year's international families, in per cent: the capability's five largest countries of origin, 2015 to 2024, and the rest of the world.

Source: Global Institute for National Capability (GINC), 2026. Underlying patents from 107 patent offices, IFI CLAIMS and Google

Country leaderboard

International patent families, 2015 to 2024, by country of origin. Growth compares the latest five full years with the five before.

Ten largest

Japan

United States

China

South Korea

Germany

France

Taiwan

United Kingdom

Switzerland

Italy

775,899

719,368

678,233

351,396

298,587

110,421

107,651

69,989

66,788

52,879


1	Japan	775,899	21.0%	1.0×	2,076,561
2	United States	719,368	19.5%	1.0×	1,406,576
3	China	678,233	18.4%	1.5×	13,707,702
4	South Korea	351,396	9.5%	1.3×	1,489,633
5	Germany	298,587	8.1%	0.9×	496,337
6	France	110,421	3.0%	1.0×	162,095
7	Taiwan	107,651	2.9%	1.0×	231,988
8	United Kingdom	69,989	1.9%	1.0×	147,108
9	Switzerland	66,788	1.8%	1.2×	79,352
10	Italy	52,879	1.4%	1.0×	87,995
11	Netherlands	52,363	1.4%	1.0×	63,070
12	Sweden	47,637	1.3%	1.1×	52,721
13	Canada	40,013	1.1%	1.0×	63,673
14	Finland	27,005	0.7%	1.4×	30,551
15	India	23,446	0.6%	1.3×	35,607
16	Austria	23,376	0.6%	1.0×	27,995
17	Israel	21,927	0.6%	1.0×	32,867
18	Spain	19,862	0.5%	1.0×	27,980
19	Singapore	19,585	0.5%	1.5×	26,128
20	Australia	18,710	0.5%	0.9×	32,783
21	Denmark	18,096	0.5%	1.1×	20,084
22	Türkiye	17,848	0.5%	1.4×	55,959
23	Belgium	17,834	0.5%	1.0×	22,074
24	Ireland	9,678	0.3%	1.1×	13,648
25	Russia	9,671	0.3%	0.7×	145,767
26	Norway	7,965	0.2%	1.0×	10,218
27	Brazil	6,839	0.2%	0.9×	33,558
28	Saudi Arabia	6,052	0.2%	1.2×	12,451
29	Poland	5,977	0.2%	1.1×	37,652
30	Cayman Islands	5,386	0.1%	0.4×	8,177
31	Hong Kong	4,909	0.1%	0.8×	11,247
32	Luxembourg	3,915	0.1%	0.8×	4,839
33	Czechia	3,185	0.1%	1.0×	6,813
34	Portugal	3,123	0.1%	1.3×	4,714
35	New Zealand	3,015	0.1%	1.1×	4,272
36	Liechtenstein	2,834	0.1%	1.0×	3,024
37	South Africa	2,413	0.1%	0.7×	5,013
38	Mexico	2,312	0.1%	0.7×	10,663
39	Malaysia	1,943	0.1%	0.8×	5,346
40	Hungary	1,619	0.0%	1.0×	3,539

Applicants

The largest applicants by international patent families, 2015 to 2024: across the world, then within each of the five countries with the most families in Intellectual Property & Intangible Assets. Names are as held in the source and are not consolidated across subsidiaries.

Global

3,687,955 international families

Crosswalk

How Intellectual Property & Intangible Assets is matched to the patent classifications. The entries below were chosen for it; each stands for itself and everything beneath it in the scheme. A patent family counts when any of its codes, in either scheme and at any office, falls under one of them. Codes since retired are placed under the entries that replaced them.

Every patent family counts: the number of families is itself the indicator.

Match: The whole record

Every patent family counts. The number of families is itself the indicator. Every patent application counts The crosswalk is a first pass that nobody has reviewed.

Other capabilities in Innovation & Commercialisation

Business Innovation Capability
Research Commercialisation & Knowledge Transfer
Innovation Ecosystems & Clusters