Patents granted by the United States patent and trademark office (USPTO) by priority year

USPTO data refers to patents granted while EPO data refers to patent applications. Data are recorded by year of publication as opposed to the year of filing used for the EPO data. This is because patents in the US (at least in the past) were only published once they were granted. Patents are allocated to the country of the inventor, using fractional counting in the case of multiple inventor countries. The methodology used is not harmonised with that of Eurostat and therefore the comparison between EPO and USPTO patents data should be interpreted with caution.