OECD REGPAT: Urgent Question

[jeromestuck]

Hello everybody,

I am currently working with the freely available OECD REGPAT database. In this context I tried to match the applicants (very often organisations) on the inventors (very often persons) using the Appln_id in order to reduce the headquarter effect. However, I now recognized, that it didn´t worked, because organisations working together in a patent project have the same Appln_id, so that I was not able to assign inventors to their organisations.

Am I right or what is the problem? Can anyone help me?

Thanks in advance!

Kind regards,

Jerome

[nico.rasters]

First you should reduce the problem. Only patents with multiple applicants are an issue.
For patents with multiple applicants there is no direct link between applicant and inventor, but as you are using REGPAT you can use the Ctry_code and Reg_code fields.

For example, (based on REGPAT Jan 2014) for appln_id 16 we find the following applicants in the EP_APP_REG table:
L'ORÉAL, "14, rue Royale,75008 Paris", "FR101", "FR"
Nestec S.A., "Avenue Nestlé 55,1800 Vevey", "CH011", "CH"
And the inventors from EP_INV_REG:
BRETON, Lionel, "14, rue de Satory,F-78000 Versailles", "FR103", " FR"
BAUR, Markus, "3, route Petite Corniche,CH-1603 Aran", "CH011", "CH"
BAUR, Markus, "3, route Petite Corniche,CH-1603 Aran", "CH021", "CH"
BAUR, Markus, "3, route Petite Corniche,CH-1603 Aran", "CH022", "CH"
I don't know why Markus Baur occurs three times. Maybe it's a bug in REGPAT. It does not affect you.
Anyway, based on the country codes you can assign Lionel Breton to L'ORÉAL, and Markus Baur to Nestec S.A.

If both applicants are from the same country then either you do the same trick using the region code, or you try to find patents where these applicants do not occur together.
Be sure to record all your findings in a new table (ID, applicant_id, inventor_id, year). I'd definitely add the "year" variable because of academic mobility.