Only patents filed to the EPO are listed in the data. This contains inventions sought protected within the jurisdiction of the EPO and also captures international patents filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), which must also be filed to the EPO. The method does, however, not list patents which are filed to either the United States Patents and Trademark Office (USPTO) or the Japan Patent Office (JPO) alone. Hence, inventions which are sought protected in the ERA countries and all the PCT member states are covered, but not inventions which are sought protected under the jurisdiction of either the USPTO or JPO alone.
The patents are also listed according to the country of the inventor(s), though an invention may have been developed in a different country.
Many patents are never used in any industrial application, and do therefore not contribute to innovation directly. Many inventions are also not sought patented, either because they cannot be patented or because the inventors attempt to protect the invention through other means. These inventions are not captured through patent statistics, which are then not a perfect indicator for innovation.