Identifying last renewal date in global patent dataset

[karbeu]

Hi,
We’re studying the patent portfolios of MNEs, which means that they often span many countries. We would like to identify for the individual patent applications whether they are still alive or whether they are lapsed, and if lapsed what the last year the firm payed renewal fee.
As far as I understand the EVENT_CODE and EVENT_AUTH can help in this process.
I have access to the full version locally of PATSTAT and access it via STATA. There are +4,000 codes for EVENT_CODE, is there anywhere where the local code for having payed renewal fee is coded? For EP, FR, JP, KR, and US we can see that the code is ‘FPAY’ but what about all other countries, which codes should then be used? Is there a list somewhere? And is there other codes you would recommend me to consider for the aim of identifying which year individual patents were last renewed in a global patent dataset?
Best regards
Karin

[Geert Boedt]

Hello Karin,
for granted EP patents, the relevenat event code is PGFP. It also specifies the year for which the renewal was paid as well as the date when it was paid. That is a rather good proxy to know if the patent is / was still valid.
For the other national codes you will need to consult the documentation for the individual countries.
There is currently an ongoing project with WIPO in order to standardise the main codes accross countries. When these are available it might make it easier for researchers to retrieve relevant envent and procedures without the need of analysing codes.
But untill then you need to check the reference documents:
http://www.epo.org/searching-for-patent ... gular.html