Finding a good patent attorney (or patent client) is a lot like dating.
Once upon a time, dates were centred around [the golf course / an elite educational establishment alumni group / the locker room / a City gentleman’s club]* (delete as appropriate).
Dates were also primarily a male affair. Typically among greying men in suits and ties.
However, we now live in the 21st century. We have at our disposal the data to make much better matches.
Finding Companies
There are several free public lists you can use to find companies. These include:
- Applicant lists from the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO):
- WIPO have a great IP Statistics section on their website.
- One particularly useful list is one of top PCT applicants, which includes applicants with more than 10 applications per year. This is provided in an Excel (XLS) file.
- Applicant lists from the European Patent Office (EPO):
- Statistics on the top 50 applicants are provided in the annual reports back to 2004 – https://www.epo.org/about-us/annual-reports-statistics/annual-report.html.
- For at least the recent reports there is a downloadable Excel (XLS) spreadsheet – look for the XLS icon somewhere on the page (normally at the top or bottom).
- From IPO.org for US applicants:
- This site provides a list of the Top 300 Organizations Granted U.S. Patents in 2015 (in PDF format)
- From the London Stock Exchange:
- A list of all companies listed on the London Stock Exchange is provided in an Excel (XLS) file – http://www.londonstockexchange.com/statistics/companies-and-issuers/companies-and-issuers.htm
- From Fast Track:
- Fast Track are an organisation that provide reports on unlisted private UK companies.
- Useful list are the Top Track 250 and Tech Track 100 (the reports are in PDF format – the end of the reports have the data in tabular form). These reports are also published in the Sunday Times every year.
From these lists you can collate a large list of companies that may or may not require intellectual property services. I prefer a long CSV list with no fancy formatting.
Matching by Technology
Most companies specialise in particular areas of technology. Likewise, most patent attorneys have specific experience in certain technologies. A good technology match saves time and money.
One way to match by technology is to use the International Patent Classification.
If you have lots of time (or a work experience student or a Mechanical Turk) you can take each company from your list, one-by-one, and perform a search on EspaceNet. You can then look through the results and make a note of the classifications of the patent applications returned from the search.
If you have no time, but a geeky interest in Python, you can automate this using the excellent EPO Online Patent Services.
Through a few hacky functions (which can be found on GitHub), you can:
- Iterate through a large list of companies / applicants;
- Clean the company / applicant name to ensure relevant search results;
- Process the search results to extract the classifications;
- Process the search results to determine the patent agent of record;
- Process the classifications to build up a technology profile for each company / applicant; and
- Process the classifications to rank companies / applicants within a particular technology area.
For example, say you are a patent attorney with 20 years worth of experience in organic macromolecular compounds or centrifugal apparatus. Who would you look at helping? How about:
Or say you wanted to know what technology areas Company X worked in? How about:
(* Quiz: any idea who this may be? Guesses in the comments…)
Or say you work for Company X and you wonder which patent attorneys work for your competitors or in a particular technology area. How about:
From here?
By improving matching, e.g. between companies and patent attorneys, we can open up legal services. As the potential of technology grows, legal service provision need not be limited to a small pool of ad-hoc connections. Companies can get a better price by looking outside of expensive traditional patent centres. Work product can be improved as those with the experience and passion for a particular area of technology can be matched with companies that feel the same.
