USPTO Patent Grant Document
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) patent grant document contains information on inventors (name and address), assignees (name and address) as well as the invention (description, intended use, specification, number of claims, and drawings).
- USPTO Full-Text and Image Database - Patent grants since 1790. Patent number search is available for any patent. Other search (e.g. name and country) only available for patents granted since 1976.
- Google Patent Search - Any search including key word search is available for patent grants since 1790.
- LexisNexis - Any search including key word search is available for patent grants since 1790.
USPTO has put an access limit to its database. Failure to comply to the rules may lead to the entire organization being blocked from future access.
Log-in is required for LexisNexis access over the Internet.
Both Google Patent Search and LexisNexis use imaging technology to covert patent grant documents into a searchable database for patents granted before 1976. Apparently the technology used is not perfect. A keyword search of these patents may not list all patents satisfying the key word inquiry. This problem is much more severe for the Google Patent Search.
NBER Patent Data Collection
It is a database containing information on patents granted by USPTO (to inventors of any countries). The information includes inventor names and addresses, assignee names, patent classification, pairwise citation made to those patents, and other measures for patent values (e.g. number of citations, claims, indexes for originality and generality). For more details, see A. Jaffe, and M. Trajtenberg, Patents, Citations and Innovations: A Window on the Knowledge Economy, MIT Press: Cambridge, 2002; or B. H. Hall, A. B. Jaffe, and M. Trajtenberg, NBER Working Paper 8498, 2001.
- 1999 version - Patent grants between 1963 and 1999 and citation made to them during 1975 and 1999.
- 2002 version - Patent grants between 1963 and 2002 and citation made to them during 1975 and 2002. Updated by Brownwyn Hall. Less right-truncatation problem, but has fewer indexes for patent values.
- 2004 version - Headed by Ian Cockburn. Not available yet.
You will need a 64-bit version of STATA to run most citation analysis (because more than 1.5G memory is needed).
There is a right truncation for patents filed to USPTO in later years (say, after 1995) and especially in forward citation (being cited by other people).
There is a left truncation for backward citation (citing other people). Although the pairwise citation list has patent number of patents granted before 1963, there is no other information available (e.g. patent class that is used to construct the originality index).
Historical Patent Data
Datasets on U.S. patents granted before 1975 (description of the invention, name and address of inventors and assignees), and in some case career patents (all patents made over career) as well as biographical information of the inventors (occupation and educational background).
- Random Sample - Collected by Naomi Lamoreaux and Kenneth Sokoloff. It is a random sample of patents in any industries that were granted in 1870-71, 1890-91, 1910-11, and 1928-29.
- B-Inventor Sample - Collected by Naomi Lamoreaux and Kenneth Sokoloff. Contains information of all patents made over entire career by inventors in the Lamoreaux-Sokoloff random sample whose last name begin with the letter B.
- Shoe, Textile and Electrical Sample - Collected by Dhanoos Sutthiphisal. Contains information of all shoe, textile, and electrical patents granted in 1870, 1890 and 1910 along with career patents as well as biographical information of the inventors. For more details, see NBER Working Paper No. 12469.
- Electrical Crossover Sample - Collected by Shih-tse Lo and Dhanoos Sutthiphisal. Contains information of all electrical crossover patents (utilized the electrical technology, but not in the generation of electricity nor in electrical communication) granted in 1890 and 1910 along with career patents and biograohical information of the inventors. For more details, see NBER Working Paper No. 14043.