DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.12706672
title: Patent data with founding year variable

description: This is the 10 July 2024 release of Founding Patents (see foundingpatents.com).  The data adds a founding year for a large fraction of US-based corporate assignees using information from OpenCorporates.  There are three files:

ocpb_assigneeatfiling.csv

This is the primary data that contains the founding year and venture capital indicator.  Note that the venture capital indicator is time-invariant. The variables are defined here and in Table 1 of the accompanying paper:




Variable
Type
Description


patent_id
Int
The year the assignee was founded according to our search for the patenting firm in OpenCorporates as described in Appendix Section A of the paper.


founding_year
int
The year the assignee was founded according to our search for the patenting firm in OpenCorporates as described in Appendix Section A of the paper.


founding_score
int
The confidence in assignee/OpenCorporates match (out of 10, see Appendix Section A in the paper).


vc_backed_assignee
flag (boolean)
A 0-1 variable that is equal to one if the company was ever VCbacked using our merge of Pitchbook to the assignee data as described in Appendix Section B of the paper.


vc_score
int
Confidence in the assignee/PitchBook match (out of 10, see Section B.)


initassignee_id
string
an ID created by us to cover original as well as reassigned assignees. see initassignee_dxwalk20220630pv for the assignee ID from the PatentsView 30 June 2022 release, where it was possible to find a match.


initassignee_organization
string
Assignee name, either from the 6/30/2022 release of PatentsView or from the Patent Assignment database


same_as_20220630pv
flag (boolean)
indicates whether the assignee name is the same as in the 6/30/2022 edition of PatentsView (0) or whether it was replaced via the Patent Assignment file (1).


assignee_organization_20220630pv
string
Assignee name from the 6/30/2022 release of PatentsView. For assignees replaced via the Patent Assignment file, this will not match initassignee organization.


assignee_id_20220630pv
flag (boolean)
Assignee ID from the 6/30/2022 release of PatentsView. PatentsView changes the assignee IDs with each release.


initassignee_idxwalk20220630pv
string
Assignee name from the 6/30/2022 release of PatentsView


foundinoc
flag (boolean)
was the initiassignee organization found in OpenCorporates?


company_number
int
Company identifier from OpenCorporates (if found).


gvkey
string
linkage to Compustat, from DISCERN Arora, Belenzon, and Sheer (2021)


cusip
string
linkage to Compustat, from DISCERN Arora, Belenzon, and Sheer (2021)


first_year_publicly_listed
int
The year an assignee that was ever publicly-traded appeared on a U.S. exchange. Data was sourced from (Ritter, 2023), supplemented by manual searches.


uo_discern
flag (boolean)
One if the firm was ever publicly-traded on a U.S. exchange, and the patent is assigned to that company (Arora, Belenzon, and Sheer, 2021).


sub_discern
flag (boolean)
A 0-1 variable for whether the assignee was acquired by a publiclytraded firm on a U.S. exchange.


univ_hospital_gov
flag (boolean)
A 0-1 variable for whether the assignee is a university, a hospital, or a government entity (independent of PatentsView having classified it as a firm)


is_us_assignee
flag (boolean)
A 0-1 variable for whether the assignee is based in the U.S. (independent of PatentsView having classified it as such)




initiassignee_crosswalk202206030pv.csv

This file provides PatentsView Assignee IDs (as of the March 30, 2022 release) for as many of the original/initial assignees as we could find. Original/initial assignees are from the USPTO Patent Assignment database, which does not contain Assignee IDs. We used the 2022 March 30 release of PatentsView to generate this database.

assignee_crosswalk_20220630pv20240331pv.csv

PatentsView occasionally changes the Assignee IDs.  This file provides a crosswalk between the version we used to build the data -- June 30, 2022 -- and  the March 31, 2024.