Countries by Patent applications, nonresidents
The United States ranked first for nonresident patent applications in 2021, receiving 329,229 filings, more than double the 159,019 recorded by second-ranked China. At the other end of the ranking, Albania, Cabo Verde, Cote d'Ivoire, Estonia, Malawi, and Tanzania each recorded just 1 application. The gap between the top and bottom reflects the extreme concentration of international patent activity in a small number of jurisdictions.
Ranking 2021
Analysis
This metric counts patent applications filed by nonresidents with a national patent office or through the Patent Cooperation Treaty procedure. According to the World Bank World Development Indicators (indicator IP.PAT.NRES), patent applications cover exclusive rights for an invention — a product or process that provides a new way of doing something or offers a new technical solution to a problem. A patent provides protection for the invention to the owner of the patent for a limited period, generally 20 years. Values are absolute counts of applications, and higher counts indicate greater inbound filing activity from foreign inventors. The dataset covers 157 countries for the 2021 reference year, with 121 of 157 countries (77.1%) providing data from that year and 87.9% providing data from the last seven years. All data points are classified as official quality. Twenty extreme outliers were identified at the 3-sigma threshold, driven by the enormous range from 1 to 329,229.
The top of the ranking is dominated by large economies with established intellectual property systems. The United States leads at rank 1 with 329,229 nonresident applications, followed by China (rank 2, 159,019), Japan (rank 3, 66,748), and Korea, Rep. (rank 4, 51,753). India ranks 5th with 35,306, Canada 6th with 32,445, and Australia 7th with 29,443. Hong Kong SAR, China places 8th at 21,542 despite its small territory, reflecting its role as a regional filing hub. Germany ranks 10th with 18,747, while the United Kingdom ranks 19th with 7,263, notably lower than several Asian economies in the upper tier.
Several counterintuitive placements appear in the middle of the ranking. Luxembourg ranks 30th with 1,441 applications, placing it ahead of the Netherlands (rank 31, 1,390), France (rank 32, 1,373), and Italy (rank 35, 797), all of which are much larger economies. Switzerland ranks 58th with only 267 applications, well below smaller economies like Morocco (rank 26, 2,549) and the United Arab Emirates (rank 27, 2,354). San Marino ties with Qatar at rank 36 with 722 applications each, an unusual placement for a microstate. Sweden (rank 47, 425) and Denmark (rank 68, 186) rank lower than several developing economies such as Nigeria (rank 39, 598) and Algeria (rank 40, 581). At the bottom, 6 countries each recorded exactly 1 application, and 13 countries recorded 4 or fewer.
This metric has several limitations. It counts filings, not grants, so high application volumes do not confirm patent quality or commercial relevance. Nonresident filings reflect the attractiveness of a national patent office as a filing destination, which can be influenced by legal infrastructure, treaty membership, and administrative factors unrelated to a country's innovation output. Offices that accept filings on behalf of regional blocs may record disproportionately high counts. Reporting gaps exist: only 77.1% of countries have data specifically from 2021, with the rest drawing on earlier years, and some values may reflect different reference periods. The wide range of 1 to 329,229 — a spread of over 32 million percent — means that aggregate comparisons can obscure meaningful variation among mid-ranked countries.
Methodology
Data source: World Bank World Development Indicators, indicator IP.PAT.NRES. The metric measures patent applications filed by nonresidents, either through the Patent Cooperation Treaty procedure or directly with a national patent office. Per the source note: patent applications are worldwide patent applications filed through the Patent Cooperation Treaty procedure or with a national patent office for exclusive rights for an invention — a product or process that provides a new way of doing something or offers a new technical solution to a problem. A patent provides protection for the invention to the owner of the patent for a limited period, generally 20 years. Values are absolute counts. The ranking covers 157 countries. Reference year is 2021, with 121 of 157 countries (77.1%) reporting data from that year and 87.9% reporting within the last seven years. All 157 data points are classified as official quality (100%). Twenty extreme outliers were detected at the 3-sigma threshold. Average year-over-year change across the dataset is 46.4%. The data range runs from 1 to 329,229. No microstate exclusions were applied; 0 of 157 countries fall below the 1 million population threshold.