Visualization example: Chattanooga patentees

Assignees & Attorneys Visualization

Suppose you’re located in Chattanooga, Tennessee and want a quick snapshot of local interest in US patent protection. Begin by clicking the "Assignees & Attorneys" tab along the top of this page to load the visualization shown here.  Click the image to enlarge it, if desired (use the escape key to return).








Reconfigured Visualization restricted to TN assignees' patents

Note the US Assignees table in the lower right corner of the visualization. Drag that table’s vertical scroll bar and click on TN (i.e. Tennessee) as shown here. The number 633 beside the TN state abbreviation tells us that the underlying database (which I constructed from the USPTO’s bibliographic data for US patents which issued in 2012) contains details of 633 US patents which issued in 2012 to assignees located in Tennessee.

Notice that all of the visualization’s tables were quickly reconfigured when you clicked on TN. The original "Assignees & Attorneys Visualization" provides details of 266,864 US patents which issued in 2012. The reconfigured visualization is restricted to the 633 US patents which issued in 2012 to assignees located in Tennessee.



Vanderbilt University popup

The upper table in the reconfigured visualization shows the names of the Tennessee-based assignees that own those 633 patents. Drag that table’s vertical scroll bar to see all the assignees’ names. The blue data bars adjacent each assignee’s name correspond to the number of patents owned by each assignee. Hover your mouse over any of the data bars to obtain a popup with further details, as shown here for the data bar corresponding to Vanderbilt University.  Again, click the image to enlarge it, if desired.





Lookup Vanderbilt's web site

Click the "Lookup Assignee Web Site" link in the popup to open a web browser pre-configured to run a web search using the assignee’s name, as shown here for Vanderbilt University. If desired, you can click the search result link to visit the official web site of Vanderbilt University and learn more about that institution—which is located in Nashville, Tennessee.





Pitts & Lake, PC popup

The next table in the reconfigured visualization shows the names of the IP firms which prosecuted the US patent applications from which the aforementioned 633 Tennessee-assigned patents issued. Drag that table’s vertical scroll bar to see all of those firms’ names. The green data bars adjacent each firm name correspond to the number of patents prosecuted by each firm. Hover your mouse over any of the data bars to obtain a popup with further details, as shown here for the data bar corresponding to Pitts & Lake, PC.

Lookup Pitts & Lake, PC web site

Click the "Lookup Attorney/Agent web site" link in the popup, to open a web browser pre-configured to run a web search using the IP firm’s name, as shown here for Pitts & Lake, PC. If desired, you can click the appropriate search result link to visit the web site of Pitts & Lake, PC and learn more about that firm—which is based in Knoxville, TN.

kind code explanation popup

Returning to the reconfigured visualization, the lower left Document Kind table shows the kind code breakdown of the 633 Tennessee-assigned patents. Hover your mouse over any number in the table’s right column to obtain a kind code explanation popup, as shown here.

633 Tennessee-assigned patents popup

The reconfigured visualization’s lower central Assignee Country table shows the countries in which the assignees of the 633 Tennessee-assigned patents are located. Of course, only one country appears—the US. Hover your mouse over the US data bar to obtain a popup with further details, as shown here.

expand US assignees (add cities)

Returning to the US Assignees table in the lower right corner of the visualization, hover your mouse over the State column header then click the + symbol which appears adjacent the column header, as seen here. This expands the table by adding a City column.

explore Tennessee

Drag the expanded table’s vertical scroll bar to reveal the city breakdown for Tennessee, as shown here. The numbers adjacent each city correspond to the number of US patents which issued in 2012 to assignees located in each of the indicated Tennessee cities. Notice the entries for "Chatanooga" and "Chattanooga". The first of those reflects a typographical error in the USPTO’s underlying bibliographic data—I’ve made no effort to cleanse the data.

Reconfigured Visualization restrictedto Chattanooga assignees' patents

Further drill down reconfiguration of the visualization is possible via any of the tables. For example, click on the "Chattanooga" entry in the US Assignees table. This further reconfigures the visualization, as shown here, by restricting it to the 26 US patents which issued in 2012 to assignees located in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The upper table in the reconfigured visualization shows the names of the Chattanooga-based assignees that own those 26 patents; the next table shows the names of the IP firms which prosecuted the US patent applications from which those 26 patents issued; etc.



At any time, you can click the revert all button (the circular back arrow symbol) at the bottom of the visualization to return to the initial visualization and start over.

As can be seen, a good deal of data mining can be accomplished with a few mouse clicks. The foregoing example is restricted to US patents which issued in 2012 but it will be appreciated that the visualizations can be enhanced by adding more bibliographic data to the underlying database.  Visualizations based on other countries' patent bibliographic data can also be created.

The <agent> sequence attribute

US 8332851

The previous post compared the <agents> element portion of the USPTO’s XML publication for United States Patent No. 8332851 with the <agents> element portion of the Canadian Intellectual Property Office’s XML publication for pending Canadian patent application serial no. 2699332. 

CA 2699332


As seen here, the US element has a sequence="01" attribute, whereas the CA element has a sequence="0" attribute. What does this mean?



I ran this simple SQL query against a database I constructed from the CIPO’s XML bibliographic data for Canadian patent documents published during the decade spanning 2001-2011. The query says "show me the sequence attribute for every practitioner record in the database, but ignore records with sequence='0' ". The query returned zero rows. Therefore, every practitioner record in the database has sequence='0'. This suggests that the CIPO does not utilize the sequence attribute.



US 8102435

I ran another query against a database I constructed from the USPTO’s XML bibliographic data for US patents which issued in 2012, to locate <agent> elements with sequence attributes other than sequence="01". This revealed some sequence="02" and sequence="03" attributes, but no others. For example, the <agents> element in the USPTO’s XML publication for United States Patent No. 8102435 has three <agent> elements with sequence attributes of "01","02" and "03" respectively, as shown here. Further queries against the same database of US patents issued in 2012 revealed 243,545 patents with only a sequence="01" attribute; 45,461 patents with both sequence="01" and sequence="02" attributes; and 10,940 patents with sequence="01", sequence="02" and sequence="03" attributes. (The database contains records of 266,864 US patents. 23,318 of those patents do not identify an "attorney, agent or firm".)

Is it surprising that the <agent> elements in the USPTO’s XML bibliographic data have sequence attributes of "01","02" or "03" , but no others? No it is not. As shown here, the USPTO’s PTOL-85B issue fee transmittal form provides for the printing on the front page of a US patent, the names of up to 3 registered patent attorneys or agents; or the name of a single firm and the names of up to 2 registered patent attorneys or agents.

Is it surprising that the CIPO does not utilize the sequence attribute in its XML bibliographic data for Canadian patent publications? Not really. Section 6 of the Canadian Patent Rules requires the CIPO to communicate only with the "authorized correspondent" in relation to a Canadian patent application. Rule 2 defines "authorized correspondent" in terms such that only one person (or firm) may be the authorized correspondent at any particular time. There is accordingly no need for the CIPO to keep track of more than one patent agent per application and thus no need for utilization of the <agent> element’s sequence attribute.



CA 2741562

What about cases that are filed and prosecuted pro se by one or more inventors without the assistance of a patent attorney or agent? No <agent> element will be found in the USPTO’s XML bibliographic data for a US patent which does not identify an "attorney, agent or firm", which makes sense. The situation in Canada is different. Since April 2008, the CIPO has  used ‘NA’ (presumably an acronym for "no agent") in the <agent> element as the "name" of the agent in a pro se situation, as seen in this example from CA 2741562.


CA 2602045

The CIPO’s XML bibliographic data for documents published before April 2008 contains <agent> elements with self-closing or empty element <name/> tags in pro se situations, as seen in this example from CA 2602045.

Canada’s <agent> element

In the two previous posts we saw that the <agent> element in the USPTO’s bibliographic data identifies the “attorney, agent or firm” for a US patent by name only.  No address information is provided—not even a country identifier—so it’s impossible to discriminate between different offices of the same firm solely by reference to the bibliographic data.

We also saw that the rep-type attribute of the <agent> element in the USPTO’s bibliographic data is populated as rep-type="attorney", without regard to the practitioner’s registration classification (i.e. attorney vs. agent).

How does Canada’s patent bibliographic data compare with the USPTO’s data in relation to the <agent> element and its rep-type attribute?

US 8332851

The previous posts considered this <agents> element extract from the USPTO’s XML publication for United States Patent No. 8332851.







CA 2699332

Another earlier post considered extracts from the Canadian Intellectual Property Office’s XML publication for pending Canadian patent application serial no. 2699332.  Here is the <agents> element portion of the CIPO’s XML publication for the ‘332 application.

Comparing the <agent> elements of US 8332851 and CA 2699332 reveals:

• the US element has a sequence="01" attribute, whereas the CA element has a sequence="0" attribute;
• the US element has a rep-type="attorney" attribute, whereas the CA element has a rep-type="agent" attribute;
• the US element has an <orgname></orgname> tag pair encapsulating the firm name “Fish & Richardson P.C.”, whereas the CA element has a <name></name> tag pair encapsulating the firm name “Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP”;
• the US element has an <address><country></country></address> tag pair encapsulating the word “unknown”, whereas in the CA element that tag pair encapsulates the country code “CA”.

I will leave the sequence attribute to a future post.

Recall that the rep-type attribute in the USPTO’s bibliographic data is populated as rep-type="attorney", without regard to the practitioner’s registration classification (i.e. attorney vs. agent).  Does the rep-type="agent" attribute in the CA element shown here mean that the CIPO’s bibliographic data reflects the practitioner’s registration classification (i.e. lawyer vs. agent) for a particular Canadian patent?  Let’s explore.

I ran this simple SQL query against a database I constructed from the CIPO’s XML bibliographic data for Canadian patent documents published during the decade spanning 2001-2011.  The query says “show me the rep-type attribute for every practitioner record in the database, but ignore records with rep-type='agent' ”.  The query returned zero rows.  Therefore, every practitioner record in the database has rep-type="agent". That is not surprising—all patent practitioners who become qualified to practice before the CIPO are registered as agents, irrespective of whether they also happen to be lawyers admitted to practice in one or more Canadian provinces.  Indeed, many—but not all—registered Canadian patent agents are also duly admitted to practice law in one or more Canadian provinces.  There is no such thing as a registered Canadian patent attorney and therefore there are no occurrences of rep-type='attorney' (or anything besides rep-type='agent') in any of the CIPO’s XML documents.

Now consider the “CA” country code encapsulated by the <address><country></country></address> tag pair.  I ran another simple SQL query—shown here—against the database mentioned in the previous paragraph.  The query says “show me the country code for every practitioner address record in the database, but ignore records for which the country code is 'CA' ”.  The query returned zero rows.  Therefore, every practitioner address record in the database has the 'CA' country code.

It can thus be seen that the <agent> element in the CIPO’s bibliographic data has the same limitations as the <agent> element in the USPTO’s bibliographic data.  The IP firm responsible for a particular Canadian patent or application is identified by name only—no address information for the firm is provided—so it’s impossible to discriminate between different offices of the same firm, solely by reference to the bibliographic data.