Can Small Firms Mitigate their Disadvantages in Patent Litigation?

McNair Project

Can Small Firms Mitigate their Disadvantages in Patent Litigation?
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Abstract

The Little Guy Academic Paper will focus on the disproportionate patent litigation of small firms. The paper will also explore the disadvantages small firms may face in patent litigation. By using the patent data provided by the USPTO and Harvard Dataverse, micro and small entities will be identified based on maintenance fees paid to the USPTO. Patent portfolios of all firms contained in both datasets will be constructed. By making the distinction between micro, small, and large, comparisons will be draw between frequency and outcomes of litigation. Data on patent litigation will be acquired through the | Lex Machina database.

Data Issues

Citations Table

The table has two columns, 'citingpatentnumber' and 'citedpatentnumber'. There are rows with 'citedpatentnumber' greater than 10000000. For instance:

 citingpatentnumber | citedpatentnumber 
--------------------+-------------------
           9226901 |      102005013726
           9226905 |         101332187
           9226905 |        2006528175
           9226905 |        2011513304
           9226905 |     1020090061010
           9226905 |     1020110049808
           9226905 |        2010126349
           9226909 |         101340916
           9226909 |          10128910
           9226914 |         102318827
           9226914 |        2014109862
           9226915 |          10111049
           9226918 |        2008005345
           9226918 |        2008005345
           9226918 |        2008077092
           9226918 |        2008077092
           9226918 |        2008070268
           9226918 |        2008128126
           9226921 |        2008129994
           9226922 |        2012000595
           9226922 |        2012058127
           9226923 |        2010135524
           9226930 |         102002040
           9226930 |          19507522
           9226930 |          50106981
           9226930 |          53082783
           9226930 |          57052334
           9226930 |          10029979
           9226930 |          10045750
           9226931 |        2008203212
           9226931 |        2010227111
           9226931 |        2012068515
           9226931 |        2013106565
           9226932 |         103458880
           9226933 |        2006257751
           9226933 |         101366734
           9226933 |         101396048
           9226933 |         101926831
           9226933 |          20202562
           9226933 |      202005009120
           9226933 |          61063618
           9226937 |          11510473
           9226937 |        2001506579
           9226937 |        2001519791
           9226937 |        2003119127
           9226937 |        2003517831
           9226937 |        2005099761
           9226937 |        2006076681
           9226937 |        2006078941
           9226937 |        2006079021
           9226937 |        2006094209
           9226937 |        2006094210
           9226937 |        2006094233
           9226937 |        2006094235

allpatent_clone=# SELECT  COUNT(*) FROM citations WHERE citedpatentnumber>10000000;
  count  
---------
1411140
(1 row)

 allpatent_clone=# SELECT  COUNT(*) FROM citations WHERE citedpatentnumber IS NULL;
  count   
----------
 23516667
(1 row)

allpatent_clone=# SELECT  COUNT(*) FROM citations;
 count   
----------
 97680838
(1 row)

Possible Solution

Jul 8, 2016: The blank citedpatentnumbers were created due to inconsistency between the original type and the type in the citation table (string to integer). The blank entries mostly correspond to publication number, non-U.S. patent number, and non-standardized patent number. The next step would be to recreate the table accounting for these issues. The U.S. publication number could be matched to the publications numbers in the histpatent table and be replaced by the corresponding patent numbers.

The foreign cited patents will be moved to a separate table.

Assignees Table

'Country' is missing.

allpatent_clone=# SELECT COUNT(*) FROM assignees WHERE country=' ';
 count  
---------
2361543
(1 row)

allpatent_clone=# SELECT COUNT(*) FROM assignees WHERE country='unknown';
count 
-------
 3918
(1 row)

allpatent_clone=# SELECT COUNT(*) FROM assignees WHERE country IN ('unknown',' ') AND state=' ';
 count  
---------
1851353
(1 row)

UPDATE: The source of the problem seems to be the Harvard Dataverse.

Assignees & assigneesUSU Tables

No information provided about the assignee. No entries for orgname or first and last names.

allpatent_clone=# SELECT COUNT(patentnumber) FROM assignees WHERE (orgname= OR orgname IS NULL) AND (firstname= OR firstname IS NULL) AND (lastname= OR lastname IS NULL); 
count  
--------
344794
(1 row)

AssigneesUSU table was made with the following code:

SELECT orgname, patentnumber, country, firstname, lastname, state
INTO assigneesUSU -- assignees in US,unknown, and blank entries
FROM assignees
WHERE country IN ('US', , 'unknown') OR (state IS NOT NULL AND state!=)
ORDER BY orgname; 

allpatent_clone=# SELECT COUNT(patentnumber) FROM assigneesUSU WHERE (orgname= OR orgname IS NULL) AND (firstname= OR firstname IS NULL) AND (lastname= OR lastname IS NULL);  
count  
--------
344793
(1 row)