Patent data

As usual in patent statistics, so-called fractional counting was applied at the level of patent families: — A patent family summarises all patent applications belonging to the same invention (e.g. an invention can be filed at different patent offices — in such a case only 1 patent is counted). — If a patent is filed by several organisations/persons located in different regions, the patent is counted pro rata by region, i.e. weighted by the factor (number of applicants from the region)/(number of different applicants). For example, if a patent has four applicants, 3 of which are located in the MRN and 1 outside the MRN, the patent with the value 0.75 enters the evaluation for the MRN. — The evaluation by technology fields is carried out via the IPC classes assigned to a patent. Patents can obtain a large number of different IPC classes and can therefore be assigned to several technology fields. If a patent has several technology fields, the number of patent applications per field is weighted by factor 1/(number of different technology fields). This means that the sum of patent applications per technology field corresponds to the total number of patent applications