Patent Information and Databases

2006 NBER patent data - additional files on my website

2002 Updates to NBER patent data. Unless otherwise noted, data files are in stata format version 6, 7, or 9, which are readable by stata or tsp. If you wish another format, I suggest you acquire stat/transfer, an excellent program that converts data files to and from a large variety of formats.

· Documentation for NBER data

· Data on patents issued 1963-2002 in stata 7 format (updated 4 Dec 04 to add asscode and 2002 patent assignee number)

· List of standardized 2002 patent assignee names corresponding to pat63_02 in stata 7 format

· Citations for patents issued 1975-2002 in stata format

1999 NBER patent data files (Hall, Jaffe, and Trajtenberg 2002 version)

Match of EPO (European Patent Office) patent data to European firm data (including R&D data) by Grid Thoma

Patent information at the UC Berkeley Libraries

News and information sites:

Yahoo! Government: Law: Intellectual Property: Patents

United States Patent and Trademark Office Home Page

Managing IP Newsletter

Patent blog of Dennis Crouch

Greg Aharonian's website

ipIQ home page

Research websites:

European software patent study website

TIIP Newsletter on Innovation and IP

Patent search and data sites:

USPTO Patent Database search

Full text search for patents from 1976. Patents from 1790 through 1975 are searchable only by Issue Date, Patent Number, and Current US Classification.

Google patent search beta

Google Patent Search covers the entire collection of patents made available by the USPTO—from patents issued in the 1790s through those issued in the middle of 2006. “We don’t currently include patent applications, international patents, or U.S. patents issued over the last few months, but we look forward to expanding our coverage in the future.” BHH note: some patents appear to be missing (e.g., 3930271, issued Jan 6 1976, the first one in the computerized data base).

Patent lens - free searchable online patent database including US, EPO and WO patents

The Patent Lens resource comprises a fully text-searchable patents database, containing over 5,500,000 patents and patent applications from the PCT, US, and EPO databases. They started with the life sciences collections from these jurisdictions and have recently added all patent classifications from the US applications and granted patents, and are in the process of expanding to all classifications in the EPO and PCT collections.

Patent Genius – free online patent search

US patents issued from 1976; interesting technology categories

Free online patent search

US Patents issued from 1976; US Applications from 2001; European Patents from 2000

esp@cenet – EPO

The European Patent Office’s search site, which includes applications and grants from the EPO, WIPO, and worldwide. Note that you should use worldwide search (not EP search) for patents with an application date older than 24 months

Patent family data at INNO-Tec, LMU

Data provided by Dietmar Harhoff, which allocates each application (identified via the appln_id variable) in the PATSTAT triadic patent data (version April 2007) to exactly one group of patents with the same set of Paris Convention priorities. In principle this can be used to construct a consistent set of citation data that takes account of variations across patents in the offices that they cite. There is also very useful documentation available on this website.

OECD Patent Data

Japanese Patent Office Data from IIP

The new IIP Patent database, produced under the supervision of Akira Goto and Kazuyuki Motohashi. Data on 9 million applications and 2.7 million registrations (grants) from the early 20^th century to January 2004. Includes citations and owner information.

Fee-based sites:

Lexis-Nexis (US patents from 1791)

INPADOC (Equivalents from EPO)

Delphion patent server home page

Derwent home page

Patent classification systems:

USPTO patent classification definitions

International patent classifications

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Last updated 2 July 2009 by Bronwyn H. Hall