Last year, biotech patents continued to represent an increasing share of US patents. In 2006, 25 out of every 1,000 US patent specifications referred to 'nucleic acid' and 45 out of 1,000 referred to 'pharmaceutical.' In Europe, more than 5,000 biotech patent applications were filed with the European Patent Office in 2003, up from <3,500 in 1995. For European biotech patent applications, German, US and Japanese inventions had the largest absolute increase, whereas those from China, New Zealand and India had the largest percentage growth.
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26 February 2008
In the version of this article initially published, the Table listing the top 20 organizations with the most US biotech patents issued in 2006 is incorrect. Du Pont should be listed in 6th place, with 80 patents. The search of the USPTO database was done for “DuPont” rather than “Du Pont”. The errors have been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.
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Lawrence, S. Biotech patents still strong. Nat Biotechnol 25, 1341 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt1207-1341
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt1207-1341
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