Dear John123,
Distinguishing in PATSTAT between applicant and inventor is fairly easy by means of the tls207 (for applications) or tls227 (for publications) in combination with the tls206_person table. PATSTAT users have the full freedom to direct their search to only consider applicants, inventors (or both).
Examples; have a look at the result of the query below:
Code: Select all
SELECT psn_name, applt_seq_nr,invt_seq_nr, tls201_appln.appln_auth+tls201_appln.appln_nr applications
,appln_filing_date, granted, nb_applicants,nb_inventors
FROM tls201_appln JOIN tls207_pers_appln ON tls201_appln.appln_id = tls207_pers_appln.appln_id
join tls206_person on tls207_pers_appln.person_id = tls206_person.person_id
WHERE
tls201_appln.appln_id = 456679731
order by appln_filing_date, applt_seq_nr,invt_seq_nr
The applt_seq_nr indicates that this application has 2 applicants. The invt_seq_nr indicates that the applications also has 2 inventors (which are no applicants).
If you want to see only the applicants from applications, you should add in the WHERE condition "applts_seq_nr > 0"
If you only want to see inventors , you should add "invt_seq_nr > 0)
For many applications (especially applications filed in the US) the inventors are also the applicants on the initial patent publication.
Assume you want to retrieve those applications for which the inventors are ALSO the applicants, then you should use "appt_seq_nr > 0 AND invt_seq_nr > 0"
Example:
Code: Select all
Select top 10 psn_name, applt_seq_nr,invt_seq_nr, tls201_appln.appln_auth+tls201_appln.appln_nr applications
,appln_filing_date, granted, nb_applicants,nb_inventors
FROM tls201_appln JOIN tls207_pers_appln ON tls201_appln.appln_id = tls207_pers_appln.appln_id
join tls206_person on tls207_pers_appln.person_id = tls206_person.person_id
WHERE
appln_auth = 'EP'
and applt_seq_nr > 0 and invt_seq_nr >0
order by appln_filing_date desc, tls201_appln.appln_auth+tls201_appln.appln_nr, applt_seq_nr,invt_seq_nr
(The above is a possible approach to identify small companies or "single inventor" applications.)
And sometimes (especially when making rankings involving US applications" you will find inventors appearing in the top list of applicants. You could filter those out via the psn_sector, but another approach is to specify "applt_sq_nr > 0 AND invt_sq_nr = 0"