EPO - Discussion forums

Hi everyone,

I am currently working with Patstat Legal Status Version 5.10 (2017 Autumn Edition) and there are a some questions on different topics which have arisen:

1, Does the earliest_publn_date equal the min(publn_date) grouped by the appln_id?

2, Is it possible, that an appln_id is part of multiple txt-files, for example, tls209_part01 and tls209_part02? Or is all information concerning one appln_id always sorted in one txt-file? This question is mostly concerning tls209.

3, How is weight constructed and how it is related to patent scope based on the following code: [COUNT(distinct LEFT(ipc_class_symbol, 4))] ?

Thank you and best regards,

Leo

Dear Leo,

1) Yes. See the description of this attribute in the Data Catalog: “EARLIEST_PUBLN_DATE: Date of earliest publication of an application”

2) Yes, it is possible, and actually it is very likely.
Usually there are more IPCs for a single application, so there are as many rows in table TLS209_APPLN_IPC as there are IPCs assigned to this application. Consequently there are as many rows in the files TLS209_PARTnn.
The about 230 000 000 IPC data rows are split into reasonably sized files without considering the content.
Note: You always have to load all files of a certain table.

3) I am not sure I understand your question. I also do not know what exactly PATENTSCOPE is doing.
But I can explain the attribute WEIGHT. It is used in 2 tables: TLS229_APPLN_NACE2 and TLS230_APPLN_TECHN_FIELD.
Let’s make an example with the latter: There is an application with APPLN_ID = 2082736 which has 3 IPCs:

• G06F 9/46
• G06F 17/30
• H04L 29/08

According to reference table TLS901_TECHN_FIELD_IPC the two G06F symbols are mapped to technical field 6 (Computer technology), and the single symbol from H04L is mapped to technical field 4 (Digital communication). So this application is associated to 2 technical field: to TF 6 with a weight of 0.66, and to TF 4 with a weight of 0.33 .
The sum of all weights of an application always sums up to the value 1.

Martin