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This page details the various matching techniques used to Geocode inventor locations in the NBER patent data. Geocoding inventor locations entails matching the inventor addresses provided in the patent data to known locations through-out the world and recording their longitude and latitude.
The reference data for the locations (which provides the longitude and latitudes) is taken from the (U.S.) [http://www.nga.mil National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency's] [http://geonames.nga.mil/ggmagaz/geonames4.asp GEOnet Names Server (GNS)] which covers the world excluding the U.S. and Antartica. The NGA site states: "There are no licensing requirements or restrictions in place for the use of the GNS data. Toponymic information is based on the Geographic Names Data Base, containing official standard names approved by the United States Board on Geographic Names and maintained by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency." [http://www.geonames.org/ Geonames.org], a third-party website based in Switzerland, provides location name data under the creative commons attribution license. However, this data is drawn from the GNS for all locations except the US and Canada, where data is drawn from the [http://www.geonames.org/ U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System] and [http://www.geobase.ca www.geobase.ca] respectively. Thus we recommend that users take advantage of the original sources and respect the original licenses if applicable.
==Details of the GEOnet Names Server (GNS)==
