Patents Score (THE)

The Patents Score (THE) recognizes the extent to which universities are supporting their national economies through technology transfer.

It measures the university’s Patent-Citation Count received by Scholarly Output from any year, that have been cited by Patents[1] from Patent Offices, filed between the year range of the ranking.

Until THE WUR 2025, only 5 Patent offices were covered: World, European, US, UK and Japanese Patent Offices. From THE WUR 2025 onwards, the coverage expanded to 107 Patent offices worldwide. Out of the 107 Patent Offices, 43 provide their citation information.

This measure is subject weighted to avoid penalizing universities producing research in fields low in Patents and normalized by the sum of academic and research staff.

The indicator is weighted at 2.0% of the overall THE World University Rankings Score.

Scholarly Output Cited by Patents (THE)opens in new tab/window

Patents Count (THE)opens in new tab/window

[1] Patents used by THE have been grouped using an Extended patent familyopens in new tab/window. An extended family means that if a Patent is filled at more than one Patent Office, the Patents and any citations they give are deduplicated. For example, a Patent citing 5 Scholarly Outputs is filled with 5 Patent Offices. There are therefore a total of 25 citations. When using an extended Patent family, the citation count is deduplicated and equals 5.

For the THE WUR 2025, a Main Patent Family has been used. Learn more about Patent Families in SciVal

The Main Patent Family is used in the Rankings and for the metrics seen by Impact customers.