Patent Intensity in Selected Countries
Patent intensity indicates the absolute number of patent applications per million gainfully employed persons in a country. This takes the size of a country into account when comparing countries.
While China leads in absolute applications in 2020, it continues to lag well behind the large European and Asian industrialized nations in terms of patent intensity. Here, Switzerland, South Korea, Sweden and Japan are at the top, followed by Germany. The leading economies have patent intensities that are higher than China's by a factor of around 10. However, in the development of patent intensity in the years 2010 to 2020, China recorded by far the highest dynamics of all countries considered.