Transcript Recent developments in patents statistics and data bases

Recent developments in
patents statistics and data bases
at EPO and OECD
EPIP – Bocconi
February 24-25, 2006
Dominique Guellec
OECD
Structure of the presentation
1. Patents databases for statistical uses:
Patstat
2. Patent indicators for macroeconomic
analysis: Patent families
Patents databases: Current situation
Difficulty to access patent data; each
analysts/researcher to set up his/her own
database extracted from data published by
patent offices
=> high cost, duplication of costs,
=> uneven quality,
=> absence of standardisation,
=> lack of transparency.
Purpose of Patstat
Patstat is a response to the current needs.
It is a database of patents designed for
serving statistical purposes => format
compatible with SQL, SAS etc.
Could be used for compiling indicators or
conducting analytical work (policy,
academic)
Contents
• Documentation: Data coming from 73
offices world wide, since beginning of the
20th century for certain offices.
• Post grant data: About 40 offices.
Variables in Patstat
• Application information (dates, numbers)
• Applicants information
• Inventors information
• Priorities information
• IPC classes information
• National patent classes information
• Publications information
• References (citations) information (about 10 countries)
• Licence information
• Entry into force information (by country)
• Lapse information (by country)
Cleaned names
• Current effort sponsored by Eurostat for
cleaning the name of applicants at EPO
and USPTO (correcting misspellings etc.).
• Cleaned names will be made available in
Patstat.
Patstat sources
EPO sources:
• DocDB
• PRS
• EPASYS
• CDS
Other sources:
• US publications
• EUROSTAT name mapping
• ...
An evolving product
• Will adapt to needs expressed by users
• More variables could be added, e.g.
procedural data in EPO etc.
• Construct various tools for manipulating
the data and complementary tables (e.g.
families, citations)
Contribution of users
• Checking quality (more than 50 million
records) => reporting defaults to EPO!
Further needs:
• Cleaning names for non western
companies (Asia)
• Cleaning SMEs names
• Consolidating groups of enterprises
Conditions of access
• The first complete version is to be issued
early April 2006. Then twice updates per
year.
• Available to all users committing to non
commercial use and no further
dissemination of the data.
A hub
Patstat will find its place in the growing
industry of patents databases: due to its
harmonised priority numbers, it could be
used as a pivot to match data from various
patent offices – hence allowing
“harmonised diversity”.
Patent families
Patent indicators
As an extremely rich source of information,
patents can be used as indicators
reflecting the technological activity of
countries => location of R&D, circulation of
knowledge, co-operation in R&D,
specialisation, technological performance
etc.
BUT... possible noise and biases in the data
make necessary elaborated filtering.
Sources of noise and bias
• Patents are complex entities... various types of
titles (e.g. applications vs. grants, priorities vs.
divisionals), cross country differences and
changes over time in legal systems.
• Heterogeneity in value (highly skewed
distribution).
• Patenting strategy of companies create
distortions in the data (e.g. cross industry
differences in propensity to patents, home bias
etc.) => patent data reflect competitive strategy
rather than just technology?
Country shares of patents applied for at the EPO and
patent grants by the USPTO for priority year 1997
(Source: OECD)
100
%
8.0
Other countries
10.1
16.4
80
46.6
European
Union
60
52.8
40
28.7
United
States
20
20.7
16.7
0
EPO
USPTO
Japan
Grants or applications?
Country shares in JPO patents, 2004, %
Applications
Grants
Europe
4.8
4.3
US
5.2
3.8
Japan
83.0
90.7
Others
7.0
1.2
One candidate as a solution:
Triadic families
• A patent family is a set of applications or
patents filed in different offices to protect a
same invention.
• A Triadic family (OECD definition) is a set
of applications at the EPO and JPO and
grants by USPTO which share one or
more priorities.
Advantages of patent families
Address two issues in patent counts
=> heterogeneity in value
=> cross country biases
Heterogeneity in value
• Patents filing is costly (fees, translation,
attorney, enforcement) => applicants are
selective: Filing in several jurisdiction
should be justified by expected value.
• Members of triadic families are more cited
than other patents, have more claims etc.
Home advantage
• Families are measured on a more neutral
ground than applications filed in a single
jurisdiction.
Countries shares in patents indicators
Priority year 1999, % (Source: OECD)
%
100
Japan
8.3
80
United States
European Union
7.0
32.4
Other countries
10.9
15.9
46.5
60
34.0
40
52.6
27.8
20
17.4
26.6
20.6
Triadic patent families
USPTO
0
EPO
Technical problems in compiling
patent families
• No one to one correspondence between filings
in different countries (e.g. two JPO priorities will
make one USPTO application and one EPO
application), plus problem with divisionals etc.
=> family counts could be biased if one counts
ALL priorities.
• OECD solution = "consolidation": All applications
sharing one or more priorities are counted as
ONE family.
The impact of consolidation on family number
(source: OECD)
60 000
Basic patent
families A
50 000
40 000
Consolidation
filter
30 000
Consolidated
patent families A*
20 000
10 000
0
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
Future developments
•
•
•
•
•
US applications instead of grants
Cross-industry biases
Families citations
Improving timeliness (nowcasting)
Extending to more jurisdictions than EPO,
JPO and USPTO?