New article in Nature Scientific Data

The dataset provides geographic coordinates for inventor and applicant locations in 18.8 million patent documents spanning over more than 30 years. The geocoded data are further allocated to the corresponding countries, regions and cities. When the address information is missing in the original patent document, it is imputed by using information from subsequent filings in the patent family. The resulting database can be used to study patenting activity at a fine-grained geographic level without creating bias towards the traditional, established patent offices.

The dataset has been produced in collaboration with KOF at ETH Zurich. It has been funded by a grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation. More information about the project is available at https://www.worldwide-patents.com/. This publication in Scientific Data is a sign of the commitment of the IIPP lab towards the creation of high-quality open data.