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Many patent offices (e.g. USPTO, EPO, WIPO, SIPO, CIPO) publish their bibliographic patent data in XML format in accordance with WIPO standard ST.36. Some patent offices (e.g. CIPO) make the data available free of charge, for non-commercial use. Others (e.g. USPTO) make the data available free of charge with no usage restrictions.
A web browser or XML viewer can be used to inspect individual XML data files, potentially providing some convenience in comparison to the online databases made available by the various patent offices. In some cases, computer programmers are retained to develop systems capable of searching the data and extracting information in various customized ways. However, such systems may not be widely available and they may require further work by the programmers if different queries are to be implemented.
The United States Patent & Trademark Office issued well over 250,000 patents in 2012.
This blog attempts to illustrate, via interactive working examples based on the USPTO’s 2012 bibliographic patent data, some ways in which multi-dimensional data sources and data analytic/visualization tools can derive powerful “business intelligence” information from such data. This is not the sort of information typically derived via text/keyword searches in conducting novelty, patentability, infringement or validity type searches.
Blake R. Wiggs
bwiggs@telus.net
