USPTO Datasets

The USPTO receives millions of patent applications and supporting documents each year. During the application process, inventors sometimes submit documents using alternative versions of their names. As raised in the USPTO directors blog (dated September 08, 2021), this can limit the office’s ability to accurately certify the number of applications from a specific inventor and determine whether inventors are following application fee rules and regulations. Certifications submitted with errors often mean longer wait times for all applicants.

Prior to this sample USPTO dataset, identifying patent application discrepancies required manually reviewing millions of documents to match names and signatures. Patent documents come in different formats and languages and can contain multiple inventors for each application. Signatures exist in various locations within a document, making signature to applicant name matching challenging.

This sample USPTO research dataset provides images of signatures extracted from inventor oath documents.  This data set could be used for validation of micro entity certifications or other research purposes. It includes 883,811 applications and oath document signature images. Its is 40.5 GB of total size and is broken as 8 zip files for the following Patent Application Series:

Application # Series	Applications	Signature Counts
12	160,116	292,354
13	156,284	282,303
14	159,067	304,182
15	154,964	305,029
16	134,728	260,884
17	58,718	112,406
29	58,125	84,123
35	1,809	1,984
Total	883,811	1,643,265

 

Each of these zip files contain folders for each application number in a given series. The application folders contain the oath document identifier that includes the image(s) of the signature(s) as PNG, and JSON file that contains the application number, the inventor name(s), and confidence level of the signature extraction algorithm.

Fun Fact: This research data set includes a few celebrity signature images such as Elon Musk and Lori Greiner. See if you can identify the others!

  

Contains detailed information on roughly 10.0 million patent assignments and other transactions recorded at the USPTO since 1970 and involving roughly 17.8 million patents and patent applications. For more information: http://www.uspto.gov/learning-and-resources/electronic-data-products/data

Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB): TTAB text data (no images) in CY2024. The file format is eXtensible Markup Language (XML) in accordance with the U.S. Trademark Trial and Appeal Board Version 1.0 Document Type Definition (DTD).

Contains detailed U.S. District Courts patent litigation data on 81,350 unique court cases filed during the period 1963 - 2020. The data was collected from the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) and RECAP as sources for all of the content. The final output datasets, provided in five different files, include information on the litigating parties involved and their attorneys; the cause of action; the court location; important dates in the litigation history; and, covering over 5 million document level information from the docket reports, descriptions of all documents submitted in a given case.

Contains detailed information on more than 13 million publicly viewable patent applications filed with the USPTO along with more than 1 million PCT applications through June 2023. The data files include information on each application's characteristics, prosecution history, continuation history, claims of foreign priority, patent term adjustment history, publication history, and correspondence address information.

Contains the images of each patent grant issued weekly (Tuesdays) from July 31, 1790 to December 26, 2023 in Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) Revision 6.0 with CCITT Group 4 Compression (single-page TIFFs). Includes a separate weekly Certificates-of-Correction (C-of-C) file and a daily Certificates file.

Certificates include post issuance documents, e.g., ex parte and inter partes reexamination documents. These were weekly and are daily starting on Ocotober of 2012.

Contains (JAN 2001 - DEC 2001) the bibliographic text (front page) of each patent grant issued weekly (Tuesdays) in CY2001 (excludes images/drawings and reexaminations). The file format is Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) in accordance with the U.S. Patent Grant Version 2.4 Document Type Definition (DTD).

Contains (backfile - August 1980 - December 2023) patent assignment text (no drawings/images) derived from patent assignment recordations made at the USPTO. The file format is eXtensible Markup Language (XML) in accordance with the Patent Assignment Daily XML (PADX) Version 0.3 Document Type Definition (DTD).

Current U.S. classification information for all patent applications (non-provisional utility and plant) published by the USPTO from March 15, 2001 to present. Approx. 450 main divisions of technology, called classifications/classes, broken into approx. 150,000 subdivisions, called subclassifications/subclasses. Provided in published patent application number sequence with the current U.S. original classification/subclassification and any cross-reference classification/subclassifications with the format of ASCII text.