What’s new with PatentsView: Our Algorithm is getting better!

Over the last few months, PatentsView has been improving its disambiguation algorithms. These improvements give researchers, students, inventors, intellectual property enthusiasts, and anyone else with an interest in patent information more accurate data to work with.

What has changed?

Our algorithms have been updated to better represent patent trends by location and assignee. The updated algorithms increase accuracy in clustering — the grouping of raw information into similar organizations — and incorporate Open Street Mapping as an additional source. This results in better, more accurate data and analysis.

These changes apply to all PatentsView data, including bulk downloads, legacy and Elasticsearch APIs, query builder tool, and list searches.  

What are disambiguation algorithms?

PatentsView’s data visualizations and analysis rely on a series of algorithms and post-processing techniques to sort inventors and assignees by name and place. We need this process, known as disambiguation, because patent data is often incomplete or inconclusive.

For instance, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office does not collect data on an inventor’s gender. So, PatentsView uses an algorithm to make an educated guess about gender based on an inventor’s name and location.

In other cases, one inventor may apply for multiple patents using different variations on their name, like John Smith, J. Smith, and Johnny P. Smith. Our algorithms help determine if these are all the same inventor or three different inventors.

Why is this important?

Innovations and inventions benefit all of society, and that benefit is increased when every inventor can fully participate in the process. Accurate analysis of patent data helps identify gaps, and thus provides a first step toward closing those gaps.

PatentsView’s goal is to provide the most accurate, up-to-date, and complete analysis of intellectual property data to foster better knowledge of the IP system and drive new insights into invention and innovation. Updates like this put us one step closer to that goal.

You can learn more about our methods and sources at https://patentsview.org.