The most inventive places in the world, mapped

Yes, the US is responsible for Donald Trump. But we also have it to thank for Oreos and Friends.

But another thing the US has given the rest of the world is innovative technologies.

It has had by far more patents registered than anywhere else in the world.

Inventors can apply for a patent, which gives them the exclusive rights to benefit from the products or services developed from their idea. And it deters any competitions stealing and profiting from their invention.

A new map has been created, showing how many patents have been approved in the US between 1977 to 2015, compared to other countries.

Just to give you an idea of the scale of new patents in the US, there were 638,000 patents that came from California over this time period, compared to 140,000 in the UK.

Overall, the US had three million patents, compared with one million in Japan. There were more patents in California alone than in the whole of Germany.

Here's the map, created by How Much:

The map is arranged in a circle according to a county’s number of patents. So US states with more patents are larger and closer to the middle.

It shows that, after California, the most patents came from New York (222,000), Texas (193,000) and Illinois (142,000).

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