technically sir....
sorry....popped into my head (Attack of Killer Tomatoes)
Dr. Nokitofa: Technically sir, tomatoes are fags.
Dr. Morrison: He means fruits.
R^)
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so each patent granting... no matter where...is technically a single "patent" (thus the 19K+ "patents")
In general, you are correct that at minimum someone would want the whole "family"....unless they just want to prosecute it in only a particular country or region
So for "counting"....you count them all
in valuation though (what we're most interested in)....you count the families....or at least use the US patent count since it's a lot more work to dig down to the continuations/continuations in part to the same priority
JMO
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