The APE INV Project: ‐An Introduction

Francesco Lissoni DIMI-Univ. of Brescia & KITES-Bocconi Univ., Milan

APE-INV workshop “Disambiguation of inventors' names and addresses from patent data” -- DISCo - Università Milano Bicocca, May 30 2011

Outline1. What is academic patenting? Why are we

interested?

2. Importance of inventors’ name disambiguation

3. APE-INV’s contribution to name disambiguation

4. APE-INV’s contribution to creation of an Academic Patent Database

1. What is academic patenting? Academic patent = Patent signed by (at least one) academic scientist

University may/may not own the patent:- business companies

- public research organizations & funding agencies

likely owners- individual scientists

Key indicator for:- technology transfer activity- university-industry ties (collaboration, consultancy)- academic entrepreneurship- markets for technologies

1. What is academic patenting? (cont.) University-invented vs. university-owned…

…it reflects institutional peculiarities of European countries:

- professor’s privilege (Germany, Austria, Scandinavia…)

- universities’ lack of managerial autonomy / expertise- high status (lack of control) of academic profession

… it has been the key for a recent & successful research programmeSurvey in:Foray D., Lissoni F. (2011), “University research and public-private interaction”, in: Rosenberg N., Hall B. (eds.), Handbook of Economics of Technical Change, North Holland/Elsevier

1. Scientists in European universities produce many patents…… Relative to all domestic patents… Especially in science-based technologies

2. Most academic patents in Europe are owned by companies

3. Relative importance of other owners (universities, PROs, individuals..) depends upon:- role of PROs vs universities in the national science system- existence/abolition of the professor’s privilege- degree of autonomy of universities- technology (more university-ownership in life sciences)

Key findings so far

1. What is academic patenting? (cont.)

2. How to identify academic patents: the importance of disambiguation TWO-STEP procedure:

1. Reclassification of patents by inventor

2. Name+matching between inventors and academic scientists

Additional STEP:

3. Survey work (homonimity & employment check; ad hoc questions)Collect matched professors-inventors’ emailsSubmit matched patents and ask:

1. Confirmation of inventorship2. Confirmation of academic status at the time of

invention

2. THE KEINS DATABASE

INVENTOR-PROFESSOR

MATCHING EXERCISE

All EPO patent applications(from EPO-Bulletin, then

PatStat)

Standardisation of company names/addresses/parent co.

Company-level data (~140k organizations)

Standardisation of inventors’ names /addresses + Massacrator © routine

Inventor-level data set

Publicaton number,

priority date, IPC class, citations

etc.

An example: the EP-KITES database

2. …disambiguation (cont.) further applications

Geography of innovation

Social network analysis of invention

Breschi S., Lissoni F. (2009) “Mobility of skilled workers and co-invention networks: an anatomy of localized knowledge flows”, Journal of Economic Geography 9: 439 - 468

Patent-Publication studies

Lissoni F., Montobbio F. (2008)“Inventorship and Authorship as Attribution Rights: An Enquiry in the Economics of Scientific Credit”, CESPRI Working Paper 224, Università “L.Bocconi”, Milano

2. …disambiguation (cont.)

Shortcomings of research so far

1. Duplication of disambiguation efforts, and no coordinationTrajtenberg M., Shiff G., Melamed R. (2006), “The “Names Game”: Harnessing Inventors’ Patent Data for Economic Research”, NBER Working Paper 12479, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge MA

2. Lack of quality controls of disambiguation exercise

little/no use of benchmarking very different results for both academic patenting

and other applications, depending on the algorithms used

Raffo J., Lhuillery S. (2009), “How to play the “Names Game”: Patent retrieval comparing different heuristics”, Research Policy 38(10), pp. 1617 1627‐

3. THE APE-INV PROJECTMain Objectives1. Creation of a common inventor database (EPO!

USPTO? JPO?)2. Production of a Database on Academic Patenting

in Europe (APE-INV Database)3. Editing joint publications using the APE-INV

Database Subsidiary Objectives4. Designing a method to allow users to correct data5. Cooperating with established institutions in the field

of patent data

1. Creation of a common inventor database

NameGame workshops: next in Brussels, September 5-6 2011http://www.esf-ape-inv.eu/index.php?page=10

Benchmark database: available from APE-INV website (http://www.esf-ape-inv.eu/download/Benchmark_document.pdf)

Expected deliverable: November 15, 2011 PatStat conference in Washington DC

KEY DATA SOURCE: “Worldwide Patent Statistical Database” (PATSTAT), 2 issues per year PERSON_ID as the key variable for identification

of inventors (see benchmark documentation) October 2009 edition as chosen starting material

2. Production of a Database on Academic Patenting in Europe

All parties interested contribute by producing so-called PROFLISTs (list of academics from ministerial records, university administrative records, publication data...)

APE-INV offers:- patent data- matching methodology and expertise

- Google-group (https://groups.google.com/group/Ape_Inv?hl=it)

Guidelines for database structure and intellectual property soon to be published on APE-INV website

3. Editing joint publications using the APE-INV Database

 Soon to appear: call for papers, special issue of Industry and Innovation (expected publication: April 2013)

Ongoing negotiations: World Patent Information, for methodological papers

Subs- 1. Designing a method to allow users to correct data

Draft document: http://www.francescolissoni.com/prova_g00002b.pdf

Subs 2. Cooperating with established institutions

EPO (PatStat producer) Accessibility of APE-INV database via PatStat forums

and conferences Project for a permanent PERSON_ID?

USPTO Invitation to “USPTO-NSF Patent Data Workshop”, June 17 Pre-conference event at PatStat conference,

November 15(both in Washington DC)

GRANTS: 1 or 2 calls a year, open to both social and computer scientists