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Patent Law

: Patently Obvious

Cross-Border Inventors

By Dennis Crouch

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The number of inventors per patent has been steadily increasing over the past forty years. Patents issued during the past six months, have an average of 2.7 inventors per patent. In all, 68% of these patents list multiple inventors with 13% listing five or more inventors. Prior to 1990, most patents listed only one inventor.

I wanted to look at cross-border or transnational inventing. To do that, I pulled-up all patents that listed inventors from two or more separate nations. For this, I used the inventor's country of residence that is typically supplied when a patent application is filed. Patents with a US inventor (US patents) had an 8% rate of including a cross-border inventor. For US patents, Germany was the most likely country of residence for collaborators. Of the top-10 patenting countries, Japan had the lowest rate of cross-border inventorship at 3% while 48% of Swiss patents listed a non-Swiss inventor. The table below provides more comparative values.

Inventor Country	Percent that Included Cross-Border Inventor	Most Likely Country of Co-Inventor
US	8%	Germany
Japan	3%	US
Germany	20%	US
Korea	4%	US
Taiwan	10%	China
Canada	26%	US
Great Britain	36%	US
France	26%	US
China	38%	US
Switzerland	48%	Germany
Italy	22%	US
Israel	23%	US
Netherlands	33%	US
Australia	19%	US

Assignees with the most cross-border patents include IBM, Microsoft, ShenZhen, Intel, Cissco, GE, Schlumberger, Nokia, HP, ExxonMobile, Novartis, and Infineon.

Full post as published by Patently Obvious on November 21, 2010 (boomark / email).