"Triparty patents" refer to patents seeking protection in the world's three largest markets (the United States, the European Union and Japan).

According to statistics, between 2000 and 2010, the total number of global third-party patents slowly increased from 45,000 to 49,000. During this period, the United States, the European Union, and Japan had roughly equal numbers of tripartite patents, fluctuating around 14,000. Among them, the proportion of third-party patents in the United States remained between 27% and 30% in the 2000s. South Korea's filings grew much faster than the overall growth, resulting in its share of third-party patents doubling from 2% to 4%. Applications from other countries remained less than 1% of all tripartite patents during this period. Overall, despite growing patent activity in China, India, South Korea and other regions, performance on this metric remains poor.