PatentsView API wrapper

This project is a wrapper for the PatentsView API.

• PatentsView Glossary provides a description of the variables.

Similar Projects

• The Patents Client project is a Python client for patents: PyPI | GitHub | Docs.

Important Notes:

• An API key is required, one can be requested here.
• There needs to be an environmental variable PATENTSVIEW_API_KEY set to the value of your API key.
• The endpoints of the new version of the API are at https://search.patentsview.org, they had last been at https://api.patentsview.org/.
• The API team produced a Swagger UI page for the new version of the API. Your API key can be entered by pressing the Authorize button.
• The new version of the API now returns USPC classifications, but we'll use CPC classifications. After May 2015 the patent office stopped assigning USPCs to utility patents.

Remarks about the data

• Patent Numbers are alphanumeric (they can include letters)
• PatentsView only includes information about the patent at issue. It does not include changes to patent information after the patent has been issued.
  • This means that if the company changes name, it won't be reflected in the patent. Example: if "International Business Machines" renames itself to "IBM", patents issued to "International Business Machines" will still be issued to "International Business Machines" (and not "IBM").
  • As an example: NETFLIX, INC. has an assignee_key_id of 17594 and an assignee_id of org_2lAuxOpAtNMvtTxhuLmX; NETFLIX.COM, INC. on the other hand an assignee_key_id of org_UNHkzir8tY7NlQrOJKT4 and an assignee_id of 363028. (This of course assumes NETFLIX, INC. and NETFLIX.COM, INC. are the same company, which is highly probable).
  • The same applies for acquisitions. Example: Company A has patent X; once company B acquires company A, patent X would still show that it is assigned to company A.
  • Probably the same thing holds if a company acquires certain patents of another company.
• The patents can be assigned to organizations (as opposed to individuals). This is indicated by the 'assignees.assignee_organization' field returned by the API.
• The assignee organizations (i.e. companies) are distinguished by name. Each organization name is a 'separate' company.
  • This means that a patent can be assigned to "IBM", "IBM Inc.", "International Business Machines".
  • Different organization names have different assignee_ids and assignee_key_ids (see NETFLIX example above).

Adding companies

Create an Microsoft Excel spreadsheet (.xlsx file) with the following structure:

Firm ID	Firm Name	Alternative names
ID	Name 1	Name 2	Name 3	Name 4	...	Name X
ID2	Company 2 Primary Name / Name 1	Name 2	Name 3	Name 4	...	Name X
ID1	Company 1 Primary Name / Name 1	Name 2	Name 3	Name 4	...	Name X

Database Structure

Here is an Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) of the database structure.

Using SQL to Select Patents

The sql folder has some SQL scripts that might come in handy. As an example, here is SQL query that selects patents between two dates:

SELECT
	p.patent_number as "Patent Number",
	p.patent_title as "Patent Title",
	-- p.company_id as "Company ID",
	c.name as "Company Name",
	-- p.company_alternate_name_id as "Alternate Name ID",
	an.name as "Company Name Listed on Patent",
	p.year,
	p.grant_date as "Grant Date",
	p.cpc_group_id as "CPC Subsections"
FROM 
	patents as p
JOIN 
	companies as c
ON
	p.company_id = c.id
LEFT JOIN 
	alternate_company_names as an
ON
	p.company_alternate_name_id = an.id
WHERE
	p.grant_date > DATE("2006-01-03") AND
	p.grant_date < DATE("2010-06-13");

Software Applications

• DbVisualizer was used to generate the graphs
• DB Browser for SQLite was used to look at the data and execute SQL queries