1. My firm has multiple offices. Can I filter documents to a specific one or more of our offices?
No. The USPTO’s bibliographic data identifies the attorney or agent only by name. No address information (not even a county identifier) is provided, so it is not possible to discriminate between different offices of the same firm.
2. Why do I see multiple repetitions (or minor variations) of the name of the same applicant (or inventor, or assignee, or attorney, or agent)?
Anomalies of this sort can be caused by clerical errors or they may reflect address changes. For example, suppose an attorney files a patent application on behalf of a corporate assignee named ABC Enterprises Ltd. and several years later the same attorney files another application for the same assignee, but this time identifies it as ABC Enterprises Limited even though there has been no change of entity. The USPTO uses the name indicated by the attorney, so we wind up with one document naming ABC Enterprises Ltd. as assignee and a second document naming ABC Enterprises Limited as assignee. Alternatively, suppose that the attorney consistently identifies the assignee as ABC Enterprises Ltd. in both applications, but provides different addresses for the assignee in each application—either because the assignee has moved or simply because the same address is presented differently in each application (e.g. 123 Main Street in the first application and 123 Main St. in the second). In database terms, entities are identified by their names and addresses together, so any differences in addresses—however slight—result in two or more different entities.
3. Nothing happens when I click the row I’m interested in!?
Ordinarily, you would click the colored data bar in the row of interest. But, as the values in the Rank column increase, the data bars become smaller and eventually vanish, so there is no data bar to click. In that situation, try clicking the column separator in the row of interest. For example, if you want to select an Assignee for which no data bar is visible, click the vertical line separating the Assignee column from the column in which the data bar would otherwise appear.
4. How do I “go back”?
Click the Revert All button at the bottom of the page. It looks like a circular back arrow.
5. The number of patents issued to assignee X (or prosecuted by firm Y) does not match the number returned by my search of the USPTO’s online database. Why is that?
In some cases this may be a manifestation of the issue discussed in point 2 above. However, another possibility is “missing data”. The visualizations presented here are based on the USPTO’s 2012 bibliographic 2012 data. According to
the USPTO’s statistics a total of 276,788 patents were granted in 2012. The visualizations presented here encompass 266,864 patents. The difference is 9,924 patents. I was unable to correctly process some of the XML records. Patents corresponding to those records are not encompassed by this visualization.
Generally, yes. Hover your mouse pointer over the data bar of interest. Click the rightmost (“View Data”) symbol in the row of symbols at the bottom of the popup window (the symbol looks like a grid or matrix). This opens the “View Data: ...” window. Click the “Underlying” tab at the bottom of the “View Data: ...” window. Scroll to the right—the patent number(s) corresponding to your results appear in the DOC_NUMBER column.
7. Where did the data come from?
8. You’ve covered only US patents that issued in 2012—what about other years? What about pending published applications? What about other countries? What about trademark registrations and/or applications?
This is an academic work in progress. There are no current plans to cover other years or datasets, although that could readily be done since the data is available.
9. When I hover over some data bars I see “Keep Only”, “Exclude" and other indicia. What are they?
As explained by Tableau Software, “Keep Only” creates a filter that removes all other data; “Exclude” creates a filter that removes the selected data; “Group Members” creates a group based on the selection—if the selection contains multiple dimensions, you can group on one dimension or all dimensions; “Create Set” creates a new set containing the selected members—you can create a new set or add members to an existing set; and “View Data” opens a window displaying the data. See for example item 6 above.
10. How does the “Search for...” feature work?
Use “Search for...” to find an Assignee or IP firm. Type a few letters distinctive of the name of interest in the “Search for...” box and click the magnifier icon at the right end of the box. For example, if you’re looking for Procter & Gamble, try typing “gamble” in the box. After clicking the magnifier icon you’ll get a list of names which include your search term or a “no matches” message. Check the boxes adjacent the name(s) of interest to restrict the visualization to those entities. See FAQ item 2 regarding possible anomalies in the entities’ names.
