Assignee Info Table

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Table Purpose

Assignment of a patent is defined by the USPTO as giving or selling part or all of a party's ownership or interest in a patent or patent application. The assignor, original or current patent owner, transfers these rights to the assignee. Therefore, the assignee info table is used to keep track of current patent ownership and all claims to a patent. Our academic projects are restricted to the study of US patents. The assignee info table will ideally allow us to distinguish which patents are US based. Once the dataset also contains information on patent litigation, the assignee table may allow us to correlate transfer of ownership to settlement and case resolutions.

Table Structure

The Assignee Info Table is structured as shown below.

          Table "public.assigneeinfo"
   Column      |          Type          | Modifiers 
 ---------------+------------------------+-----------
 lastname      | character varying(200) | 
 firstname     | character varying(200) | 
 address       | character varying(200) | 
 postcode      | character varying(200) | 
 orgname       | character varying(500) | 
 city          | character varying(200) | 
 country       | character varying(200) | 
 patent        | character varying(200) | 
 state         | character varying(200) | 
 patentcountry | character varying(200) | 
 nationality   | character varying(200) | 
 residence     | character varying(200) | 
 asgseq        | integer                | 
 asgtype       | integer                |

Example of table entries:

lastname | firstname | address | postcode |                   orgname                   |     city     | country | patent  | state | patentcountry | nationality | residence | asgseq | asgtype 
---------+-----------+---------+----------+---------------------------------------------+--------------+---------+---------+-------+---------------+-------------+-----------+--------+---------
         |           |         |          | GM Global Technology Operations LLC         | Detroit      | US      | 9295186 | MI    | US            |             |           |        |        
         |           |         |          | Transistor Devices, Inc.                    | Hackettstown | US      | 9295185 | NJ    | US            |             |           |        |        
         |           |         |          | GM GLOBAL TECHNOLOGY OPERATIONS LLC         | Detroit      | US      | 9295184 | MI    | US            |             |           |        |        
         |           |         |          | TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES LIMITED           | Mumbai       | IN      | 9295183 |       | US            |             |           |        |        
         |           |         |          | INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION | Armonk       | US      | 9295182 | NY    | US            |             |           |        |

Table Variables

The orgname (organization name) and the first and last name columns identify the patent assignee. Other than patentcountry, all other table variables apply to the organization or person. Patentcountry refers to where the patent was granted. Orgname is not standardized. Certain patents have multiple assignees, resulting in repeated patent numbers. The key in this table is composite and consists of a unique combination of last and first name, orgname, and patent number.

Current Problems

'Country' is missing.

allpatent_clone=# SELECT COUNT(*) FROM assigneeinfo WHERE country = ;

count  

---

2361543

(1 row)

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

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

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

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)

Solutions to previous problems with the Assignee Table have also been recorded on Patent Data Cleanup - June 2016.