Page 1 of 1

PSN_Sector quality

Posted: Tue Mar 31, 2020 1:49 pm
by tomasvanrijn
Hello!

For a study we are currently doing, we wanted to get an idea of the number of families in the Netherlands that have a 'Private' applicant involved.

We assumed that psn_sector = INDIVIDUAL could be relevant and ran the query below. However, we find interesting results:

1 - The number drops after 2011 for WO and NL applications (relevent to our study).
- For WO: 2010 - 2308, 2011 - 347, NL: 2010 - 388, 2011 - 36
2 - EP applications also show a minimal drop (107 -84 after 2010) but those absolute numbers appear quite low

Something similar happens when the person_ctry_code is set on Germany (DE) or Belgium.
When we look for COMPANY instead of INDIVIDUAL the numbers look solid.

I find this especcialy strange as I assume that many of the WO applicants are also EP applications and thus I would not expect such a difference between the two.

Could you explain what I'm seeing here?

Thanks in Advance!

Code: Select all

SELECT earliest_filing_year, COUNT  (DISTINCT docdb_family_id)

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
(tls206_person.person_ctry_code = 'NL' )

AND
(appln_auth = 'WO')

AND
(earliest_filing_year between 2002 and 2019)

AND
applt_seq_nr > 0

AND
psn_sector LIKE 'COMPANY%'

GROUP BY earliest_filing_year
ORDER BY earliest_filing_year ASC

(PSN_Sector quality)... inventors being flagged as applicants

Posted: Mon Apr 06, 2020 1:11 pm
by EPO / PATSTAT Support
Hello Tomas,
The reason for the sudden dip (from application filing year 2012 to 2013) is the fact that inventors that were in previous years (appln_filing_year < 2013) also flagged as applicants started to be flagged as inventors only. Before 2013, its seem the default value was to flag all inventors equally as applicant.
I think there was a change in the PCT application or formalities handling, but I could not find any reference documents that confirm this. You will see a similar phenomena when looking at applications filed at the US patent office - but not for example for applications filed at the EPO or other offices. The data in PATSTAT reflects correctly the data on the printed documents and the PSN_SECTOR is correctly assigned - also, no missing data.
In the attached document you will find 2 queries that illustrate this:
PCT_applicant_inventor_names.xlsx
(24.68 KiB) Downloaded 615 times
The second query (a more or less random listing of names that have country code NL) shows that starting from application date 11-10-2012, inventors are much less labelled as also being the applicant. And therefore they are no explicitly labelled as "individuals" because all inventors are individuals.

For your research, I would use the query below to identify applications where no companies where identified and add applications (OR in the WHERE clause) that have an "individual as applicant which is not flagged as an inventor.
This is approach is not ideal as it will of course also exclude the cases where the inventor is applicant besides an applicant - company being registered as well. (query does not run on PATSTAT Online because of sub-routine restrictions, ideally would be to breaks this query in separate subroutines and tmp tables.)

Code: Select all

SELECT tls201_appln.appln_id, appln_nr, appln_filing_date,
APPL_GROUPED.APPLiCANT_GROUP,
INVT_GROUPED.INVENTOR_GROUP
FROM tls201_appln
join (select appln_id, STRING_AGG (cast((psn_name+' ['+person_ctry_code+']' )as NVARCHAR(MAX)), '¦ ') APPLICANT_GROUP 
	from tls207_pers_appln join tls206_person applicant on tls207_pers_appln.person_id = applicant.person_id 
						and applt_seq_nr > 0  and person_ctry_code = 'NL' group by appln_id)APPL_GROUPED
	on tls201_appln.appln_id = APPL_GROUPED.appln_id
join (select appln_id, STRING_AGG (cast((psn_name+' ['+person_ctry_code+']' )as NVARCHAR(MAX)), '¦ ') INVENTOR_GROUP 
	from tls207_pers_appln join tls206_person inventor on tls207_pers_appln.person_id = inventor.person_id and invt_seq_nr > 0 group by appln_id) INVT_GROUPED
		on tls201_appln.appln_id = INVT_GROUPED.appln_id
WHERE
((appln_auth = 'WO') AND
(appln_filing_year = 2015)
and APPL_GROUPED.appln_id not in  (select distinct appln_id from tls207_pers_appln join tls206_person 
									on tls207_pers_appln.person_id = tls206_person.person_id							
									where psn_sector  in ('COMPANY GOV NON-PROFIT ','COMPANY GOV NON-PROFIT UNIVERSITY',
									'COMPANY GOV NON-PROFIT','COMPANY HOSPITAL','COMPANY INDIVIDUAL','COMPANY UNIVERSITY',
									'COMPANY','GOV NON-PROFIT HOSPITAL','GOV NON-PROFIT UNIVERSITY','GOV NON-PROFIT',
									'HOSPITAL','UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL','UNIVERSITY')))
									or 
((appln_auth = 'WO') AND
(appln_filing_year = 2015)
and APPL_GROUPED.appln_id  in  (select distinct appln_id from tls207_pers_appln  join tls206_person 
									on tls207_pers_appln.person_id = tls206_person.person_id							
									where psn_sector  in ('individual') and tls207_pers_appln.invt_seq_nr = 0 ))
ORDER BY tls201_appln.appln_id