NACE Rev. 2 Classification of an Applicant

[Tim Grünebaum]

Hi all,

I was wondering if one can retrieve an applicant's (=company) NACE industry code from Patstat.

Of course we have table TLS229_APPLN_NACE2, but there we can "only" find the corresponding NACE classification of a specific patent and this not necessarily equals the company's industry code.
So maybe some of you have a clue...
- if there is such information somewhere in the data which I did not find yet, or
- how one can get the industry code from just looking at the corresponding patents' NACE classifications (maybe in combination with other variables like WEIGHT)

Thank you

Tim

[mkracker]

Hi Tim,

it's not in the data, but it's quite straightforward to compute it yourself: For all applications of an applicant, sum up the weights of each NACE classification. If needed, you may normalize the values by dividing them by the number of applications, so the sum of all NACE weights of an applicant is 1.

Just try it yourself.

Martin / EPO PATSTAT

[nico.rasters]

Find the applicant in a database such as Amadeus or Compustat and derive the NACE code from that database. In case the database does not have a NACE code, it will likely have another kind of code (e.g. SIC or NAICS) after which you will you have to apply a concordance table.

The TLS229_APPLN_NACE2 table will just give you the area a firm is patenting in, so this is merely a proxy for the applicant's NACE code. On the other hand it's a lot faster than trying to find your applicants in another database.

See http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/ramon/inde ... P_PUB_WELC for classifications and concordances.

[Tim Grünebaum]

Thank you, guys!

@ Nico:
Other database will not help me. I want to get the NACE Code in order to match Patstat with another database and use the Code to enhance my matching approach

@ Martin:
Ok, so your advice would be multiplying WEIGHT with the number of applications in each NACE class and the take the highest value? That would mean we just take the industry the applicant is patenting in the most. Quite a proxy of course but I think there is just no better way. I will try that, thanks!

[mkracker]

Hi Tim,

I am not sure you understood me correctly. I meant this:

Code: Select all

select sum(weight) as WeightOfNaceCode,  -- sum of weights of all applications, by NACE code
    n.nace2_code
from tls206_person p
join tls207_pers_appln pa on p.person_id = pa.person_id
join tls229_appln_nace2 n on pa.appln_id = n.appln_id
where psn_name like '%tech%uni%dortmund%'
group by n.nace2_code
order by WeightOfNaceCode desc

Here I used your Alma Mater as an example applicant. It is no surprise that the result of this query shows that Techn. Univ. Dortmund is active in a variety of areas. If you want to characterize the TU Dortmund by a single industry code, then you could use the one with the highest weight, which according to the result of this query is NACE code 21, which is "Manufacture of Basic Pharmaceutical Products and Pharmaceutical Preparations".

Note that the IPC-NACE table maps IPCs almost exclusively to manufacturing industries and not to service companies. Like in this example, the Techn. Univ. Dortmund is a research institution and hardly manufactures anything. Nevertheless, all their applications are mapped to the manufacturing classes of NACE. This must be considered when interpreting the results.