Reproducible Patent Data

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McNair Project
Reproducible Patent Data
Uspto web logo.jpg
Project Information
Project Title Reproducible Patent Data
Owner Oliver Chang
Start Date May 17
Deadline
Primary Billing
Notes
Has project status Active
Subsumes: Redesigning Patent Database, Patent Assignment Data Restructure
Copyright © 2016 edegan.com. All Rights Reserved.


A continuation of Redesigning Patent Database that aims to write faster, more centralized code to deal with data from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). By having an end-to-end pipeline we can easily reproduce or update data without worrying about unintentional side effects or missing data. Currently, it succeeds in bulk downloading from the USPTO; streaming file splitting, that is, splitting large concatenated files into their component parts in-memory; and parsing of XML to Java objects, APS to Java Maps, and maintenance fee data to Java objects.

Progress

  1. Downloader done
  2. Splitter done
  3. Parser done
  4. Create tooling for minions
  5. Create XPath queries for reissue, design patents (only utility right now)
  6. Setup PostgreSQL JDBC
  7. Create naive schema based on previous approaches
  8. Create new data structures
  9. Database Insert (modify models/ files with some mapping to database fields)
  10. Data Cleanup (reference Marcela and Sonia's work)
  11. Setup pipeline script to complete all of these steps in series
  12. Investigate parallel speedup (e.g. multithread, mmap)
  13. Data Source Merger (only USPTO granted, maintfee, assignment not USPTO applications or Harvard Dataverse or Lex Machina currently)

Directory Layout

Where is the Data?

Directories

All of the information for this project is located at E:\McNair\Projects\SimplerPatentData

There are several interesting directories:

  • data/downloads/ is USPTO bulkdata, unmodified straight from the scraper
  • data/extracts/ is a directory of a strict subset of the information stored in data/downloads/. It is the result of running a bulk 7-zip job on that directory to get everything unzipped in a flat data structure. Note that these files have the USPTO modified-by time since that metadata is stored in the zipfiles. To extract files in this nice format, select all of the zipfiles and setup an extraction job like in this screenshot
  • data/backups/ is a 7zip'd backup of the corresponding directory in extracts
  • src/ is the main code repository for the java project

Input Files

All of the text-only Red Book files for granted patents from 1976 to 2016, inclusive. To find a specific year's XML file, find it in

E:\McNair\Projects\SimplerPatentData\data\extracts\granted\

To find assignment data, look in

E:\McNair\Projects\SimplerPatentData\data\extracts\granted\

To find maintenance fee data, look in

E:\McNair\Projects\SimplerPatentData\data\downloads\maintenance

Where is the Code?

The code has the same parent directory as the data, so it is at E:\McNair\Projects\SimplerPatentData\src. You might notice a lot of single-entry directories; this is an idiomatic Java pattern that is used for package separation. If using IntelliJ or some other IDE, these directories are a bit less annoying.

The development environment is Java 8 JDK, IntelliJ Ultimate IDE, Maven build tools, and git VCS.

The git repository can be found at https://rdp.mcnaircenter.org/codebase/Repository/ReproduciblePatent

Prior Art

This tool is not so concerned with adding new functionality; rather, it aims to take a bunch of spread out Perl scripts and create a faster system that is easier to work with. As such, its functionality is largely stolen from those scripts:

  • Downloader: E:\McNair\Software\Scripts\Patent\USPTO_Parser.pl
  • XML Splitter: E:\McNair\PatentData\splitter.pl
  • XML Parsing: E:\McNair\PatentData\Processed\xmlparser_4.5_4.4_4.3.pl and E:\McNair\PatentData\Processed\*.pm

In addition, I used several non-standard Java libraries listed below:

If using maven, these dependencies are listed and should automatically be setup.

Design

E:\McNair\Projects\Market for Ideas E:\McNair\Projects\Little Guy Academic Paper

TODO

Using Code

TODO

Altering Code

TODO

Schema Reconciliation

Data Formats
Dates Used Format Supported by Parser? Utility Reissue Design
January 1976 to December 2001 APS Only syntax
January 2001 to December 2001 SGML Ignored; use concurrently recorded APS data
January 2002 to December 2004 XML Version 2.5 Only syntax
January 2005 to December 2005 XML Version 4.0 ICE Maybe
January 2006 to December 2006 XML Version 4.1 ICE Maybe
January 2007 to December 2012 XML Version 4.2 ICE Maybe
January 2013 to September 24, 2013 XML Version 4.3 ICE Yes
October 8, 2013 to December 2014 XML Version 4.4 ICE Yes
January 2015 to December 2016 XML Version 4.5 ICE Yes


Database

Because there isn't a compelling reason not to, I used the existing PostgreSQL infrastructure on the RDP. The "Java Way" of interacting with databases is the Java Databse Connectivity API (JDBC), an implementation-agnostic API for interacting with databases. This project uses the stock Postgres JDBC, version 42.1.1

  1. Create an empty database: $ createdb --username=postgres patents_june_2017 # password is tabspaceenter
  2. Create tables via script at TODO
    • Prior Example E:\McNair\Software\Scripts\Patent\createTables.sql
    • Aim to create a completely naive schema with as few constraints as possible--iteratively add move constraints in the future

Related Pages

External Links