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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).
On the element <country>, archives and publishers can use this attribute to regularize the input for searching without altering the element content, for example, placing a country code in the attribute when the <country> element content is fully spelled out or uses a non-standard country abbreviation.
OPTIONAL on many elements; click for list and usage

<country>, <funding-source>, <patent>, <support-source>

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 @country is an optional attribute; there is no default.
Tagged Samples
Country of a funding organization 
...
<award-group id="arda-511" award-type="contract">
 <funding-source country="US">ARDA ACQUAINT</funding-source>
 <principal-award-recipient>Berkeley</principal-award-recipient>
</award-group>
...
<country>
The @country attribute should use a strict vocabulary (such as the ISO 3166-1 Alpha-2 codes, see example below), but the element content may be uncontrolled. 
...
<address>
 ...
 <country country="GB">United Kingdom</country>
</address>
...
Patent Number, Cited 
...
<element-citation publication-type="patent">
 ...
<collab collab-type="assignee">Hospira, Inc.</collab>
<source>Microneedles for minimally invasive
drug delivery</source>
<patent country="US">United States 
 patent US 6,980,855</patent>
 <year iso-8601-date="2005-12-27">2005</year>
 <month>Dec</month>
 <day>27</day>
</element-citation>
...