Life science patents granted, by filing office
What you should know about this indicator
- Patents are a form of intellectual property that give their holders exclusive rights to an invention for a limited period, typically 20 years from the filing date. It prevents others from making, using, selling, or distributing the patented invention without the patent holder's permission.
- The number of patents granted by a patent office is an indicator of innovation and research activity within a country or region. It is sometimes used as a proxy for technological advancement and economic development, as patents often lead to new products, services, and industries.
- This chart shows patents based on where the patent application was filed. This is typically the national or regional patent office of the region where the intellectual property protection is sought, but does not necessarily mean the inventor was born or lived there.
- Inventors can file patents in national or regional patent offices. Regional patent offices cover multiple countries and issue a single patent that is valid in all member countries (with some exceptions). Patents granted by regional offices are not included in the national totals of the member countries.
More Data on Medicine & Biotechnology
Sources and processing
This data is based on the following sources
How we process data at Our World in Data
All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.
At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.
Reuse this work
Citations
How to cite this page
To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:
“Data Page: Life science patents granted, by filing office”, part of the following publication: Tuna Acisu, Saloni Dattani, Fiona Spooner, Veronika Samborska, Hannah Ritchie, and Max Roser (2025) - “Medicine and Biotechnology”. Data adapted from World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260304-094028/grapher/medicine-and-biotechnology-patents-granted-by-filing-office.html [online resource] (archived on March 4, 2026).How to cite this data
In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) (2025) – processed by Our World in DataFull citation
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) (2025) – processed by Our World in Data. “Life science patents granted, by filing office” [dataset]. World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), “World Intellectual Property Organization - Patents 2025-05-01” [original data]. Retrieved April 1, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260304-094028/grapher/medicine-and-biotechnology-patents-granted-by-filing-office.html (archived on March 4, 2026).Download
Quick download
Download the data shown in this chart as a ZIP file containing a CSV file, metadata in JSON format, and a README. The CSV file can be opened in Excel, Google Sheets, and other data analysis tools.
Data API
Use these URLs to programmatically access this chart's data and configure your requests with the options below. Our documentation provides more information on how to use the API, and you can find a few code examples below.
Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/medicine-and-biotechnology-patents-granted-by-filing-office.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=falseMetadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/medicine-and-biotechnology-patents-granted-by-filing-office.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=falseExcel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/medicine-and-biotechnology-patents-granted-by-filing-office.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests
# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/medicine-and-biotechnology-patents-granted-by-filing-office.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})
# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/medicine-and-biotechnology-patents-granted-by-filing-office.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()R
library(jsonlite)
# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/medicine-and-biotechnology-patents-granted-by-filing-office.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/medicine-and-biotechnology-patents-granted-by-filing-office.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/medicine-and-biotechnology-patents-granted-by-filing-office.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear