The APE‐INV Project: An Introduction Francesco Lissoni DIMI-Univ. of Brescia & KITES-Bocconi Univ., Milan APE-INV workshop “Disambiguation of inventors' names and addresses from patent data” -- DISCo - Università Milano Bicocca, May

Outline 1. What is academic patenting? Why are we interested? 2. Importance of inventors’ name disambiguation 3. APE-INV’s contribution to name disambiguation 4. APE-INV’s contribution to creation of an Academic Patent Database

1. What is academic patenting? Academic patent = Patent signed by (at least one) academic scientist  University may/may not own the patent: - business companies - public research organizations & funding agencies likely owners - individual scientists  Key indicator for: - technology transfer activity - university-industry ties (collaboration, consultancy) - academic entrepreneurship - markets for technologies

1. What is academic patenting? (cont.) University-invented vs. university-owned… …it reflects institutional peculiarities of European countries: - professor’s privilege (Germany, Austria, Scandinavia…) - universities’ lack of managerial autonomy / expertise - high status (lack of control) of academic profession … it has been the key for a recent & successful research programme Survey in: Foray D., Lissoni F. (2011), “University research and public-private interaction”, in: Rosenberg N., Hall B. (eds.), Handbook of Economics of Technical Change, North Holland/Elsevier

1. Scientists in European universities produce many patents… … Relative to all domestic patents … Especially in science-based technologies 2. Most academic patents in Europe are owned by companies 3. Relative importance of other owners (universities, PROs, individuals..) depends upon: - role of PROs vs universities in the national science system - existence/abolition of the professor’s privilege - degree of autonomy of universities - technology (more university-ownership in life sciences) Key findings so far 1. What is academic patenting? (cont.)

2. How to identify academic patents: the importance of disambiguation TWO-STEP procedure: 1. Reclassification of patents by inventor 2. Name+matching between inventors and academic scientists Additional STEP: 3. Survey work (homonimity & employment check; ad hoc questions)  Collect matched professors-inventors’ s  Submit matched patents and ask: 1. Confirmation of inventorship 2. Confirmation of academic status at the time of invention

2. THE KEINS DATABASE INVENTOR-PROFESSOR MATCHING EXERCISE

All EPO patent applications (from EPO-Bulletin, then PatStat) Standardisation of company names/addresses/parent co. Company-level data (~140k organizations) Standardisation of inventors’ names /addresses + Massacrator © routine Inventor-level data set Publicaton number, priority date, IPC class, citations etc. An example: the EP-KITES database

2. …disambiguation (cont.)  further applications  Geography of innovation  Social network analysis of invention Breschi S., Lissoni F. (2009) “Mobility of skilled workers and co-invention networks: an anatomy of localized knowledge flows”, Journal of Economic Geography 9:  Patent-Publication studies Lissoni F., Montobbio F. (2008)“Inventorship and Authorship as Attribution Rights: An Enquiry in the Economics of Scientific Credit”, CESPRI Working Paper 224, Università “L.Bocconi”, Milano

2. …disambiguation (cont.) Shortcomings of research so far 1.Duplication of disambiguation efforts, and no coordination Trajtenberg M., Shiff G., Melamed R. (2006), “The “Names Game”: Harnessing Inventors’ Patent Data for Economic Research”, NBER Working Paper 12479, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge MA 2. Lack of quality controls of disambiguation exercise  little/no use of benchmarking  very different results for both academic patenting and other applications, depending on the algorithms used Raffo J., Lhuillery S. (2009), “How to play the “Names Game”: Patent retrieval comparing different heuristics”, Research Policy 38(10), pp. 1617‐1627

3. THE APE-INV PROJECT Main Objectives 1.Creation of a common inventor database (EPO! USPTO? JPO?) 2.Production of a Database on Academic Patenting in Europe (APE-INV Database) 3.Editing joint publications using the APE-INV Database Subsidiary Objectives 1.Designing a method to allow users to correct data 2.Cooperating with established institutions in the field of patent data

1.Creation of a common inventor database NameGame workshops: next in Brussels, September Benchmark database: available from APE-INV website ( Expected deliverable: November 15, 2011  PatStat conference in Washington DC KEY DATA SOURCE: “Worldwide Patent Statistical Database” (PATSTAT), 2 issues per year PERSON_ID as the key variable for identification of inventors (see benchmark documentation) October 2009 edition as chosen starting material

2.Production of a Database on Academic Patenting in Europe  All parties interested contribute by producing so-called PROFLISTs (list of academics from ministerial records, university administrative records, publication data...)  APE-INV offers: - patent data - matching methodology and expertise -Google-group ( )  Guidelines for database structure and intellectual property soon to be published on APE-INV website

3. Editing joint publications using the APE-INV Database Soon to appear: call for papers, special issue of Industry and Innovation (expected publication: April 2013) Ongoing negotiations: World Patent Information, for methodological papers

Subs- 1. Designing a method to allow users to correct data Draft document: g00002b.pdf g00002b.pdf

Subs 2. Cooperating with established institutions EPO (PatStat producer)  Accessibility of APE-INV database via PatStat forums and conferences  Project for a permanent PERSON_ID? USPTO  Invitation to “ USPTO-NSF Patent Data Workshop”, June 17  Pre-conference event at PatStat conference, November 15 (both in Washington DC)

GRANTS : 1 or 2 calls a year, open to both social and computer scientists