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country Country

An abbreviation or code that names a country. This is information that can be used to identify a country that granted a patent or to provide a machine-comparable form of the name of a country as an addition to the content of the <country> element.

Usage/Remarks

Best Practice

Although this attribute is optional and open to any value, for Best Practice, the country code should be provided whenever it is known, and the ISO 3166-1 2-letter alphabetic codes should be used, for example:
US
United States
GB
United Kingdom
CA
Canada
The complete list is available from ISO, in HTML, text-file, and XML-file versions at the following location: https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#search. Choose the country code button and search using the search icon.
OPTIONAL on elements: <country>, <funding-source>, <patent>
Value Meaning
Text, numbers, or special characters An abbreviation for a country, typically using the ISO 3166-1 two-letter alphabetic codes, for example, “US” for the United States of America.
Restriction This is an optional attribute; there is no default.
Tagged Sample

Country of cited patent

...
<mixed-citation publication-type="patent"
  publication-format="print"
 ><person-group person-group-type="inventor"
  ><string-name><surname>Goss</surname>, 
   <given-names>K.</given-names></string-name></person-group>, 
 <source>Cryptographic Method and Apparatus 
  for Public Key Exchange with Authentications</source>, 
 <patent country="US">U.S, Patent no. 4,956,863</patent>, 
 <month>Sept.</month> <day>11</day>, 
 <year>1990</year>.</mixed-citation>
...