English: The number of patent applications filed each year has been growing for most countries although not smoothly, and jumps in activity are often observed due to changes in local laws (see Figure on the right). The high number of patent families for Spain in the 1800's is related to the superior preservation and cataloguing of the data by Spanish Patent and Trademark Office compared to other countries (see 1836 U.S. Patent Office fire). The USA was the World's leader in terms of patent families filed between 1900 and 1966, when Japan took over. Since 2007 PR China leads. Also noteworthy is a decline in the number of patent applications in many jurisdictions since 1960s-1970s. Sweden is a particularly prominent example. The search was done on 2023-04-14 in Questel-Orbit FAMPAT database using search strings like "EPRD=2000 AND (US)/PN" for simple patent families with the earliest priority date in 2000 and with at least one application published in the USA.