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N. 30, November - December 2006
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 | IP & RTD: Articles
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Making sense of statistics
European Patent Academy1
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The volume of patent data increases daily and is put to a variety of
different uses. While scientists and research engineers use patent data for the
technological information it provides, and business managers use it for the
commercial and competitive intelligence it contains, policy-makers need
meaningful and reliable statistics from which they can identify trends and make
recommendations.
Addressing these issues exclusively was the theme of the conference
“Patent Statistics for Policy Decision Making“, hosted at the
Austrian Patent Office in Vienna on 23rd and 24th October 2006. The meeting was
jointly organised with the European Patent Office through its European Patent
Academy and Controlling Office, in cooperation with the OECD and additional
support from the WIPO, JPO, USPTO, NFS and the European Commission.
This provided a unique opportunity to bring together experts and
academics on patent statistics from many important universities and
institutions in the field. More than 60 participants from four different
continents discussed the most recent patent statistics, theories and tools and
also reviewed the situation in the most developed countries. EPO Chief
Economist, Bruno van Pottelsberghe de la Potterie, explained how the
statistical methods by which raw patent data is analysed can be of crucial
importance if sensible and relevant policies to support innovation are to be
developed by national patent offices and governments, and agencies around the
world. Mr van Pottelsberghe de la Potterie played a key role in developing the
conference programme in co-ordination with Dominique Guellec, Senior Economist
from the OECD.
The highlight of the conference was the EPO's presentation of a new
world-wide patent statistical database called "PATSTAT" which gave an overview
of the design, structure and applications of this innovative database. The
presentation was made by Rob Heijna and followed by a workshop by James
Rollinson.
PATSTAT was developed by patent information experts at the EPO's
Vienna sub-office, and includes patent data from 73 offices world-wide and
post-grant data from about 40 offices. It was developed specifically with the
needs of policy-makers, academics, analysts and IP institutions in mind.
Researchers working in this field have previously had to assemble data sets
from various and disparate sources and were obliged to perform extensive
"cleaning" of the data at considerable cost and time. The PATSTAT dataset
addresses these issues, efficiently harmonising data, resolving issues over
family members and addressing such problems as applications from one applicant
appearing under several different names. The database also contains related
information on citations, procedural information and legal status, which are
all of interest to statisticians.
Updates to the PATSTAT database will be released twice a year (in
March and September), and will be available to any user committing to
non-commercial use.
Benjamin Disraeli (British Prime Minister 1868 & 1874-1880)
famously said "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and
statistics". Thanks to PATSTAT, the EPO and our partners hope to reverse this
view and make patent data a sound and truthful basis for informed decisions and
policy.
1.
Giovanna Oddo, who heads the Academia Unit of the European Patent
Academy, describes one of the Academy's 70 events this year. The Academy
promotes and supports the IP training activities of many organisations across
Europe. («)
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