Data production methods for harmonised patent statistics

European Commission Eurostat

Description

RW3QFWRULWWUFD0RROLOW$'URGFWRHW6VWHRHG,Q6D661DD3RXLQHKG+IHUQDJPVVLQ$VHFVLDVWLWTHEMEScience andE U R O P E A NTecnologyC O M M I S S I O NW O R K I N G P A P E R A N D S T U D I E S2006 EDITIONEurope Direct is a service to help you find answers to your questions about the European UnionFreephone number (*):00 800 6 7 8 9 10 11(*) Certain mobile telephone operators do not allow access to 00-800 numbers or these calls may be billed.A great deal of additional information on the European Union is available on the Internet.It can be accessed through the Europa server (http://europa.eu).Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 2006ISBN 92-79-02499-XISSN 1725-0838© European Communities, 2006ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSThispublicationhasbeenmanagedbyEurostat,UnitF4—Education,ScienceandCultureStatistics—headedbyJean-LouisMercy.ProjectleaderBernardFélix—[e-mail].

Informations

• Publié par: EUROPEAN-COMMISSION-EUROSTAT
• Nombre de lectures: 37
• Langue: Danish

Extrait

THEME
Science andE U R O P E A N
TecnologyC O M M I S S I O N
R1VWHURWQWVDW,W6FVVVL6H6RFWGXL0RQUHDKPGQIVHFWQURRLLWGFD3RWOQO6$DULRL'$DJWHDH3+
W O R K I N G P A P E R A N D S T U D I E S
2006 EDITIONEurope Direct is a service to help you find answers to your questions about the European Union
Freephone number (*):
00 800 6 7 8 9 10 11
(*) Certain mobile telephone operators do not allow access to 00-800 numbers or these calls may be billed.
A great deal of additional information on the European Union is available on the Internet.
It can be accessed through the Europa server (http://europa.eu).
Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 2006
ISBN 92-79-02499-X
ISSN 1725-0838
© European Communities, 2006ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ThispublicationhasbeenmanagedbyEurostat,UnitF4—Education,ScienceandCultureStatistics—
headedbyJean-LouisMercy.
Projectleader
BernardFélix—[e-mail]
Eurostat,UnitF4—Education,ScienceandCultureStatistics
StatisticalOfficeoftheEuropeanCommunities
JosephBechBuilding
5,rueAlphonseWeicker
L-2721Luxembourg
Authors
Bart Van Looy,MarietteduPlessis, Tom Magerman
Production
1,2 1,2
1TheworkingpaperwaspreparedbyBart Van Looy ,MarietteduPlessis and Tom Magerman under
3coordinationofGaëtanChâteaugiron .
Whenquotingthisreport,pleaseusethefollowingreference: Van Looy,B.,duPlessis,M.&Magerman,
T. (2006)DataProductionMethodsforHarmonizedPatentIndicators:Assigneesectorallocation.Eurostat
WorkingPaperandStudies,Luxembourg.
1 Steunpunt O&O Statistieken, Faculty of Economics & Applied Economics, K.U.Leuven
2
Research Division Incentim, F.Leuven
3
Sogeti, Luxembourg
2

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction ....................................................................................................................................................1
2. Existing Sector Typologies ............................................................................................................................2
3. Methodology ..................................................................................................................................................5
3.1 Methodology ............................................................................................................................................6
3.2 Implementing the rule-based and case-based methodology: Results ..................................................10
4. Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................................14
5. References .................................15
Appendix A.....................................................................................................................16
STEP 1.1: COMPANY SEARCH RULE BASE ............................................................................................16
STEP 1.2: COMPANY SEARCH CASE BASE 21
STEP 1.3: COMPANY SEARCH CASE BASE: Exact matches ..................................................................33
STEP 2.1: UNIVERSITY........................................................................................33
STEP 2.2: UNIVERSITY34
STEP 2.3: UNIVERSITY..............................................................34
STEP 3.1: GOVERNMENT SEARCH RULE BASE ....................................................................................34
STEP 3.2: GOVERNMENT SEARCH CASE BASE 35
STEP 3.3: GOVERNMENT SEARCH CASE BASE: Exact matches ..........................................................35
STEP 4.1: HOSPITAL............................................................................................36
STEP 4.2: HOSPITAL.36
STEP 4.3: HOSPITAL..................................................................36
STEP 5.1: PRIVATE NON-PROFIT SEARCH RULE BASE .......................................................................36
STEP 5.2: PRIVA SEARCH CASE BASE 37
STEP 5.3: PRIVA SEARCH CASE BASE: Exact matches ..............................................38
STEP 6.1: INDIVIDUAL SEARCH RULE BASE ..........................................................................................38
STEP 6.2: INDIVIDUAL SEARCH CASE BASE .........................................................................................39
STEP 6.3: INDIVIDUAL................................................................39
STEP 7: OTHER/UNKNOWN SEARCH .....................................................................................................39
STEP 8: CONDITIONAL RULES FOR ORGANISATIONS WITH MULTIPLE CODES OR INCORRECT
CODES .......................................................................................................................................................39
Appendix B ......................................................................................................................................................54
31. Introduction
Patent documents are one of the most comprehensive data sources on technology development. As such,
they provide a unique source of information to analyze and monitor technological performance. Although te-
1chnology indicators based on patent documents have certain limitations , Griliches’ observation of almost two
decades ago still seems to hold: “In spite of all the diffi culties, patent statistics remain a unique resource for
the analysis of the process of technical change. Nothing else even comes close in the quantity of available data,
accessibility, and the potential industrial, organizational and technological detail.” (Griliches, 1990). Patent
2indicators are now used by companies and by policy and government agencies alike to assess technological
3progress on the level of regions, countries, domains , and even specifi c entities such as companies, universities
and individual inventors.
In addition, from the mid-1980s onwards, a broader conception of the dynamics underlying innovative
performance, synthesized by the concept of the ‘innovation system’, has emerged (e.g. Freeman, 1987; Lun-
dvall, 1992; Nelson, 1993, Nelson and Rosenberg, 1993). This concept sees innovative performance on the
level of regions, nations or industries as driven by industrial innovative activity and the pursuit of scientifi c
excellence, both of which are infl uenced and shaped by institutional frameworks. Moreover, interaction among
different institutional actors is advanced as a further explanation for differences in technological and innovative
performance. These interactions are seen as critical in the process of knowledge generation and diffusion on a
national, regional and industrial level.
A corollary of this conception of innovation dynamics is the need for refi nements in patent indicators.
Sector assignment - i.e. identifying whether patentees are companies (private business enterprise), universities
and higher education institutions, or governmental agencies - thus becomes a necessary condition for further
analysis of the dynamics underlying technological performance. Within the framework of the PATSTAT Task
Force on Harmonized Patent Statistics, efforts have been launched to produce an exhaustive sector assignment
taxonomy. EUROSTAT has invited experts from K.U.Leuven to develop such a methodology.
In this paper, the methodology that we have developed will be outlined and made fully transparent. It will
be shown that the methodology proposed is effective both in terms of completeness (over 99% of the patent
volume of both USPTO and EPO are assigned to discrete categories) and accuracy (99% of the assigned codes
refl ect the category correctly). At the same time, further improvements are considered both feasible and rele-
vant. In order to ensure that such improvements are put into effect, EUROSTAT and its development partners
(K.U.Leuven and SOGETI) have deliberately chosen to put the methodology into the public domain. This
action is, in effect, an invitation to researchers and analysts to further build on the methodology and to impro-
ve it where feasible. When informed about such improvements, EUROSTAT and its partners will ensure that
updates and refi nements of the methodology as a whole are made available to the wider public.
The paper is structured as follows: in the following section, we fi rst highlight previous efforts to arrive
at an exhaustive sector assignment of patentee names. This overview leads to the conclusion that additional
development efforts are indeed relevant. In Section 3, we outline the principles followed in developing the
methodology, and we present the outcomes obtained. This will allow us to draw conclusions on performance
and to delineate avenues for further improvement in the methodology, in Section 4.
1 Propensities to patent differ among industries, fi rms and countries.
2 Patent indicators are now to be found in recurrent publications of the National Science Foundation (US), the European Commission (Science and
Technology Indicator Reports) and the OECD alike.
3 Analysis by domains is feasible by using the WIPO International Patent Classifi cation or aggregation schemas like the ‘Systematic of OST/INPI/FhG
ISI of 5 technology areas and 30 sub-areas’; analysis in relation to industries is enabled by concordance schemes based on patent classifi cation, like
the MERIT concordance table (Verspagen, 1994), the OECD Technology