Patent Applications by Country (1883 - 2024)

For over a century, America and Europe ruled the world of invention — until China filed more patents than the entire rest of the planet combined. This bar chart race traces the number of patent applications filed each year at every major national patent office, from 1883 to 2024. Watch the global lead pass from the United States to Germany, the Soviet Union, Japan, and finally China — each era's industrial powerhouse leaving its mark on the record. Key moments to look for: • 1883 — The Paris Convention sets the first international patent rules; the United States already files 34,000 applications a year, four times Germany's total • 1942 — War mobilization halves U.S. filings, letting Germany's office top the chart • 1964 — Soviet "inventor certificates" — state-owned patents — make the USSR the world's #1 filer • 1973 — Japan seizes the lead and holds it for over three decades, peaking at 439,000 filings in 2001 • 2011 — China becomes #1; by 2024 its patent office receives 1.8 million applications — 49% of the entire world 📊 Data: WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) Statistics Database 📐 Patent applications filed per year (by national patent office) ───────────────────────────────────────── 🎵 Music: "Rites of Passage" & "Terminus" by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0 (www.scottbuckley.com.au) ───────────────────────────────────────── The Variable — Data is the variable. Subscribe: @TheVariableData ───────────────────────────────────────── #BarChartRace #Patents #Innovation #DataVisualization #AnimatedStatistics