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3 posts
bradchattergoon
Last seen: 05/18/2021 - 14:17
Joined: 03/17/2021 - 14:08
How does PatentsView determine Assignee Type?

As far as I understand it, Patent Applications do not ask for an indicator of whether it is a Company, Government, or Individual filing the patent, so how does PatentsView determine the appropriate assignee type? And has this procedure changed over the years? 

Sun, 05/02/2021 - 20:42
Russ
Last seen: 12/04/2024 - 17:06
Joined: 11/14/2017 - 22:15
in the underlying data

Hi Brad,

It's in the underlying data.  The patentsview database is built by processing the bulk grant files that the patent office makes available.  See https://bulkdata.uspto.gov/.  There were various xml versions and the earliest files are in Green Book format.  If you look at the dtds and the Green Book format's pdf, you'll see that assignee has a role field with the following values (copied from the most recent dtd on https://www.uspto.gov/learning-and-resources/xml-resources):

<role>    The <role> for US documents one of the following 2-position codes is present in the role element:

01 Unassigned
02 United States company or corporation
03 Foreign company or corporation
04 United States individual
05 Foreign individual
06 U.S. Federal government
07 Foreign government
08 U.S. county government
09 U.S. state government

Which matches the description of assignee_type of the assignee endpoint, except for the leading zeros.

Russ

Thu, 05/13/2021 - 16:11
bradchattergoon
Last seen: 05/18/2021 - 14:17
Joined: 03/17/2021 - 14:08
Ok thanks Russ!

Ok thanks Russ!