DOCUMENTATION FOR THE INV_COUNTY_00_15.TXT PATENT BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATA EXTRACT FILE --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- INV_COUNTY_00_15_DOC.TXT 7/7/2016 4:47PM Questions about this data file should be directed to: US Patent and Trademark Office Electronic Information Products Division Patent Technology Monitoring Team P.O. Box 1450 Alexandria, VA 22313-1450 tel : (571) 272-5600 e-mail : oeip@uspto.gov Patent Bibliographic Information - Inventor-County Data, 2000-2015 Patent Grants -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *************************************************** * * * THIS FILE IS BEING INCLUDED ON THIS CUSTOM * * PATENT DATA EXTRACT DVD-ROM AS A SUPPLEMENT * * TO THE "INVENTOR DATA" EXTRACT. PLEASE SEE THE * * CONTENTS THAT ACCOMPANY THE "INVENTOR DATA" * * EXTRACT FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE * * INVENTOR DATA. * * * *************************************************** Notes ----- This custom patent data extract file, "INV_COUNTY_00_15.TXT" generally includes U.S.-resident inventor data for utility, design, plant, and reissue patents, and statutory invention registrations issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office from 1/1/2000 to 12/31/2015. The data in this extract have been used to assist in producing various PTMT reports that aggregate counts of patents by U.S. county and metropolitan/micropolitan area. Those reports are accessible on the USPTO Web Site at: http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/reports_cbsa.htm The INV_COUNTY_00_15.TXT data extract file includes the patent number, inventor sequence number (the order in which the inventor is listed on the front page of the issuing patent), the inventor name, cleaned city, cleaned state/country code, zip code (where available), state Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) code, matched county (or county equivalent) FIPS code, and matched county (or county equivalent) name. Please note that a patent's inventor may appear several times in the file when their city and state of residence has been associated with more than one county or county equivalent. This occurs because PTMT was unable to determine a unique county or county equivalent for the listed inventor residence. Please note that an inventor also may appear several times in the file when they have received more than one patent during the specified time period. This occurs because an inventor is listed once for each patent received during the time period. File name: INV_COUNTY_00_15.TXT Recording Mode: ASCII File Size: 618,430,825 bytes Number of Records: 5,204,434 Begin/Char End Char Field Data Position Position Length Type Description 1 7 7 char Patent Number 8 8 1 Unused 9 11 3 integer Inventor Sequence Number 12 12 1 Unused 13 32 20 char Last Name of Inventor 33 33 1 Unused 34 48 15 char First Name of Inventor 49 49 1 Unused 50 64 15 char Middle Name of Inventor 65 65 1 Unused 66 68 3 char Surname Modifier (e.g.,"Jr.") 69 69 1 Unused 70 89 20 char City, Cleaned 90 90 1 Unused 91 93 3 char State/Country Code, Cleaned 94 94 1 Unused 95 99 5 char Zip Code 100 100 1 Unused 101 103 3 integer State FIPS Code 104 104 1 Unused 105 108 4 integer County FIPS Code 109 109 1 Unused 110 134 25 char County Name Each line is terminated with a carriage return and a line feed character (0D 0A in hexadecimal) after the last populated data field. Trailing blank spaces in each record may be removed to reduce the size of the file. The file is sorted first by ascending patent number (primary) and second by ascending inventor sequence number (sequence in which the inventor name appears on the printed patent) (secondary). This file is being included on this custom patent data extract DVD-ROM as a supplement to the INVENTOR data extract. Please see the contents that accompany the INVENTOR data extract for additional information about the inventor data. Withdrawn patent numbers, missing patent numbers, state-country code information, and additonal information are included with that INVENTOR data extract. IN THIS INV_COUNTY_00_15 DATA EXTRACT, INVENTOR RESIDENCE CITY, STATE, AND ZIP CODE INFORMATION HAS BEEN USED IN AN ATTEMPT TO MATCH EACH INVENTOR WITH A U.S. COUNTY (OR COUNTY EQUIVALENT) OF RESIDENCE. IN SOME CASES, INCONSISTENCIES HAVE BEEN FOUND IN THE INVENTOR RESIDENCE INFORMATION LISTED ON THE ISSUED PATENTS. IN SUCH CASES, PTMT HAS ATTEMPTED TO CORRECT THE CITY AND STATE OF RESIDENCE INFORMATION TO IMPROVE THE MATCHING EFFORT. THE RESULTS OF THOSE CORRECTIONS TO THE INVENTOR RESIDENCE CITY AND STATE INFORMATION ARE INCLUDED IN THE "CITY, CLEANED" AND "STATE/COUNTRY CODE, CLEANED" DATA FIELDS INCLUDED IN THIS DATA EXTRACT. FOR A SMALL NUMBER OF INVENTOR RECORDS, PTMT WAS UNABLE TO IDENTIFY THE COUNTY (OR COUNTY EQUIVALENT) OF RESIDENCE. THESE RECORDS ARE GIVEN A COUNTY FIPS CODE OF "0" (UNKNOWN). - A small sample of the data contained in this data file is included in a separate file, "SAMPLE_INV_COUNTY_00_15.TXT". ******************************* BRIEF DISCUSSION OF THE PTMT METHODOLOGY FOR IDENTIFYING THE COUNTY OF RESIDENCE FOR U.S.-RESIDENT INVENTORS: A U.S. Post Office (USPS) reference file has been used to match the city and state of residence of each inventor to one or more counties. For a small percentage of the inventors, PTMT was unable to determine an associated county. The file used for matching inventor city and state of residence information to counties is based on U.S. Post Office 5-digit zip code, place name, and county data files distributed to the public during the last week of March, 2011. The U.S. Post Office (USPS) 5-digit zip code, place name, and county data files were obtained from a private vendor. Place name and associated county data available from the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia, accessible at: http://geonames.usgs.gov/domestic/download_data.htm, have replaced the former FIPS 55-3 standard that was used, with some modifications, for producing some older PTMT reports that profile patenting by U.S. county and metropolitan area. These GNIS data were considered for use in the inventor residence matching process used for the current set of reports. Ultimately, however, PTMT chose to use the Post Office files to produce the current set of reports for several reasons. First, when performing inventor residence matching using the USPS files, PTMT was able to obtain a higher matching percentage than when using the GNIS data. Second, while the GNIS data contain many more place name entries for each state than the USPS files, this results in more cases where a place name within a state is associated with multiple locations in the state. For example, the GNIS data identify two to four different locations within California for the place name, "Mountain View", while the USPS file identifies a single location. Investigation into this particular example determined that the three additional locations for "Mountain View" that were identified by the GNIS file were either very small regions in California that were unlikely to be associated with many inventors or older historic-named areas. Third, for many of the inventors, the residence information includes a street address and zip code which suggests to PTMT that the USPS zip code files should be more compatible with the residence information being provided by the inventors (note that while many inventors provide their full street address of residence, only the inventor city and state of residence generally are available in a non-image format that is readily usable for performing computer aggregations of the data). There are several issues of note associated with using the USPS files for determining the inventor county of residence from the city and state of residence. In some cases, the USPS files may associate a place name with an incorrect, adjacent county, as a result of the way in which the USPS zip code files are built, where each zip code is associated with one primary county and with one or more city names. As a result, it is believed that the reporting of inventor residence data at a more aggregated level, such as at the "core based statistical area" (CBSA) level, is preferred, since the problems introduced by this issue should be reduced. PTMT reports generally count patent data at the metropolitan/micropolitan area level of aggregation. As another issue of note, the USPS file omits some smaller place name locations within each state which may result in the undercounting of patents associated with those areas (and the overcounting of patents from some other areas). *******************************