Data

Patent applications - All

See all data and research on:

What you should know about this indicator

  • CSET sources patent data from 1790 Analytics, PATSTAT, and The Lens.
  • Patent data can be delayed, as some patent offices take years to release filings, so the most recent years may be incomplete and should be used with caution.
  • Here, we’ve chosen not to include the most recent years of data in the dataset, as they are likely incomplete, as noted in the original dataset provided by CSET.
  • The dataset includes over 360,000 AI — related patent families—groups of documents related to a single invention—and counts each family as one patent, treating it as a "granted patent" if any document in the family has been granted, or as a "patent application" if all documents are still pending.
  • Inventors often apply for the same patent in multiple countries, so the dataset groups all filings for one invention across jurisdictions into a single patent family, using the year and country of the first application to assign a filing date and location.
  • For example, if someone files a robot patent first in the European Patent Office and then in China, all documents are grouped under one EPO patent.
  • The dataset reports where patents are filed, not where inventors are from—for instance, many patents filed in the U.S. are by non — U.S. inventors—so filing location is used as a proxy for innovation and market interest.
Patent applications - All
Patents related to artificial intelligence first submitted in the selected country's patent office. Subsequent granting of that patent could be by any country's patent office.
Source
Center for Security and Emerging Technology (2025) – processed by
Last updated
April 18, 2025
Next expected update
April 2026
Date range
2014–2019
Unit
applications

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

The research data in CAT (Country Attributes and Topics) is derived from ETO's Merged Academic Corpus (MAC), which contains detailed information on over 270 million scholarly articles worldwide. CAT uses only AI-related articles from the MAC. Articles are attributed to countries based on the author organizations listed in each article's metadata. An article is attributed to a country if it lists at least one author affiliated with an organization in that country.

The top ten authors for each country are identified based on the number of citations to articles they released while affiliated with institutions in that country. CAT classifies articles into AI subfields using subject assignment scores in the MAC. Articles are assigned to up to three subfields based on their scores.

CAT includes patent data from 1790 Analytics and Dimensions, and it counts AI-related patent families, including patent applications and granted patents. Patents are attributed to the country where they are filed, not necessarily the inventor's nationality. CAT also uses Crunchbase data to identify AI-related companies based on various criteria and includes investment metrics for these companies.

The data in CAT is updated at least once a quarter, with plans for more frequent updates in the future.

Retrieved on
April 18, 2025
Retrieved from
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by . To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Center for Security and Emerging Technology (2025). Emerging Technology Observatory Country Activity Tracker, Artificial Intelligence.

How we process data at

All data and visualizations on 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 .

Notes on our processing step for this indicator
  • World aggregate does not include data for Micronesia, Tonga, Samoa, Kiribati, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Palau, Tuvalu, Bermuda, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Gibraltar, Jersey, Kosovo, Moldova, Isle of Man, Iceland, Albania, Andorra, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Malta, Montenegro, San Marino, North Macedonia, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Vatican City, Guernsey, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Bahrain, Laos, Bangladesh, Lebanon, Bhutan, Maldives, Cambodia, Syria, Tajikistan, Cyprus, Mongolia, North Korea, Myanmar, Timor-Leste, Nepal, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, Palestine, Iraq, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Qatar, Vietnam, Yemen, Kuwait, Algeria, Cape Verde, Equatorial Guinea, Swaziland, Namibia, Central African Republic (the), Angola, Ethiopia, Niger, Benin, Gabon, Nigeria, Botswana, Gambia, Rwanda, Burkina Faso, Ghana, São Tomé and Príncipe, Burundi, Guinea, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Seychelles, Cameroon, Sierra Leone, Lesotho, Somalia, Chad, Liberia, Libya, South Sudan, Congo, Madagascar, Sudan, Côte d'Ivoire, Malawi, Togo, Mali, Djibouti, Mauritania, Uganda, Egypt, Mauritius, Tanzania, Zambia, Eritrea, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Comoros, Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Suriname, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Bahamas, Ecuador, Paraguay, Barbados, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, El Salvador, Belize, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Cayman Islands (the), Turks and Caicos Islands, Saint Lucia, and Dominica.

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by are completely open access under the . You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by , please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Patent applications - All”, part of the following publication: Charlie Giattino, Edouard Mathieu, Veronika Samborska, and Max Roser (2023) - “Artificial Intelligence”. Data adapted from Center for Security and Emerging Technology. Retrieved from /grapher/artificial-intelligence-patents-submitted [online resource]
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:

Center for Security and Emerging Technology (2025) – processed by 

Full citation

Center for Security and Emerging Technology (2025) – processed by . “Patent applications - All” [dataset]. Center for Security and Emerging Technology, “Country Activity Tracker: Artificial Intelligence” [original data]. Retrieved April 30, 2025 from /grapher/artificial-intelligence-patents-submitted