ESF-APE-INV 3rd “Name Game” workshop

ESF-APE-INV 3^rd “Name Game” workshop

Brussels, 5-6 september 2011

Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management, Université Libre de Bruxelles &
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Faculty of Economic & Applied Economic  Sciences

The 3^rd “Name Game” workshop on patent data will be held jointly in Brussels and Leuven, on September 5-6, 2011, as part of the APE-INV project, sponsored by the European Science Foundation (www.academicpatenting.eu). It builds upon the success of previous events that took place in Paris (November 2009) and Madrid (December 2010), also as part of the APE-INV project. It aims at convening several researchers interested into building inventor-based patent datasets, which requires solving a number of technical problems and exchanging data and expertise. It will be take place on the new premises of the Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management, Campus du Solbosch, Avenue F.D. Roosevelt 42.

The ultimate goal of the initiative is that of building an open-access, inventor-based patent database connected to PatStat, the EPO Worldwide Patent Statistical Database (http://www.epo.org/patents/patent-information/raw-data/test/product-14-24.html)

Participation to the workshop is on invitation. This call is meant for circulation among groups and invididual scholars who are known to be interested in the subject. Researchers who have not yet received an invitation, but are interested to join the workshop, are encouraged to contact the organizers. The event has limited funding, so it will not be possible to reimburse every participant's expenses (details on funding availability will be provided by the organizers on an individual basis).

Presentations will be either dedicated to:

-          the general theme of disambiguation of inventors' names in patent data, including follow-ups from the “APE-INV Challenge: Testing and Assembling Algorithms for Inventor Names’ Cleaning” (see: http://www.esf-ape-inv.eu/index.php?page=15; contact Michele Pezzoni <michele.pezzoni@unibocconi.it> for enquiries).

-          the specific theme of relationship between results from APE-INV disambiguation activities and PatStat, including strategies for producing an APE-INV inventor database, linking it up to future PatStat releases, and collecting feedbacks from users

-          applications to the core theme of the APE-INV project, namely academic patenting.

Provisional programme (June 3; TBA are open slots; more slots can be added)

Monday 5/9/2011	11-11.30	Welcome and opening remarks (B. van Pottelsberghe, F.Lissoni)
	11.30-13.00	The APE-INV inventor database - Francesco Lissoni: "The APE-INV inventor database: multiple solutions and feedbacks from users" - Michele Pezzoni: "EPO inventors according to Massacrator" - Andrea Maurino: “EPO inventors according to SameDude"
	13.00-14.00	Lunch
	14.00-15.30	Disambiguation of inventors: further experiences - Lee Fleming: "The Patent Network Dataverse" (tbc) - Stéphane Maraut & Catalina Martinez: "Disambiguating Spanish inventors" (tbc) - Yusuke Naito: "Disambiguating Japanese inventors" (tbc)
	15.30-16.00	Coffee break
	16.00-17.30	Academic Patenting /1 - Cornelia Meissner: "Academic patenting in the UK" (tbc) - Anja Schon: "Academic patenting in Germany" (tbc) - TBA
	19.30	Dinner at Le Belgo Belge (www.belgobelge.be)
Tuesday 6/9/2011	9.00-10.30	Academic Patenting /2 -Natalia Zinovyeva “University Effects on Regional Innovation” - TBA - TBA
	10.30-11	Coffee break
	11.30-12.30	- Roundtable discussion on technical issues, including: 1) linking APE-INV to PatStat 2) Merging APE-INV and NSF inventor data 3) Feedbacks from users
	12.30-13.30	Lunch
	13.30-16.00	SC meeting (restricted to members of the APE-INV Steeering Committee)

PROVISIONAL LIST OF SPEAKERS AND PARTICIPANTS

Andrea Maurino – Univ. Milano‐Bicocca (IT)

Anja Schon – Technical University Munich (DE)

Bart Van Looy – APE/INV Steer. Committee (BE)

Bianca Poti – CERIS CNR (IT)

Bruno van Pottelsberghe ‐ APE/INV Steer. Committee (BE)

Catalina Martinez – APE/INV Steer. Committee (ES)

Cornelia Meissner ‐ BRICK, University of Torino (IT)

Francesco Lissoni – APE/INV Steer. Committee (IT)

Gianluca Tarasconi – KITES‐Univ. Bocconi, Milano (IT)

Guido Buenstorf – University of Kassel (DE)

Helene Dernis – OECD (FR)

Jerome Daungy ‐ Université Libre de Bruxelles (BE)

Lee Fleming - Harvard Business School (US)

Lorenzo Cassi – CES ‐ University Paris 1 and OST (FR)

Malwina Mejer – Université Libre de Bruxelles (BE)

Matthijs Den Besten ‐ Ecole Polytechnique (FR)

Maureen McKelvey – University of Gothenburg (SE)

Michele Pezzoni – KITES‐Univ.Bocconi, Milan (IT)

Monica Coffano – University Bocconi, Milan (IT)

Natalia Zinovyeva – IPP‐CSIC (ES)

Nicolas van Zeebroeck - Université Libre de Bruxelles (BE)

Sonja Radas – Institute of Economics Zagreb (HR)

Stephane Lhuillery – APE/INV Steer. Committee (CH)

Stephane Maraut – IT consultant (FR)

Xiaoyan Song - KUL (B)

Yusuke Naito - Hitotsubashi University (JP)

ESF‐APE‐INV 2nd “Name Game” workshop

The 2nd “Name Game” workshop on patent data will be held in Madrid, on December 9‐10, 2010, as part of the APE‐INV project, sponsored by the European Science Foundation.

It builds upon the success of a similar initiative held in Paris in November 2009, also as part of the APE‐INV project, and it aims at convening several researchers interested into building inventor‐based patent datasets, which requires solving a number of technical problems and exchanging data and expertise. It will be hosted by IPP, the Instituto de Politicas y Bienes Publicos, of CSIC (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas) and organized by Francesco Lissoni (KITES‐Bocconi) and Catalina Martinez (IPP‐CSIC).

APE-INV is a project funded by the European Science Foundation that aims at identifying inventions stemming from academic research through a reclassification by inventor of patents from PatStat, the EPO Worldwide Patent Statistical Database.

Such reclassification effort requires inventors’ names, surnames, and addresses to be parsed, matched, and filtered, in order to identify synonyms (that is names+surnames or addresses which are the same, although spelled differently) and to
disambiguate homonyms (verify whether two inventors with same name and surname are indeed the same person). Several algorithms have been produced in the recent past, either with reference to data from PatStat or from national patent offices.

One the objectives of the APE-INV project is to compare the accuracy and efficiency of such algorithms, and to involve as many researchers as possible in a collective research effort aimed at producing a shared database of inventors’ names, surnames, and addresses, linked to PatStat.

In order to achieve this objective APE-INV produces a number of PatStat-based benchmark databases, and invites all interested parties to test their algorithms against them. The present document (to be updated periodically) describes such benchmark databases, their rules of access, and provides guidelines on how to conduct the tests and how to report their results, in order to ensure comparability. Information is also provided on workshops that will be organized in order to allow a discussion of the results.

Objectives and Programme Approach

The main results expected by Ape-INV are there:

Sharing experiences for the creation of INV Database
  to share expertise and methods among European (and US or Japanese) reearchers for the creation of an inventors’ database, one that will identify all different spelling variations of the inventor’s name, as well as the inventor’s different addresses and patents;
  to share expertise and methods among European researchers for matching the inventors’ database with national databases of academic scientists, in order to produce comparable counts of academic patenting activity and to collect auxiliary information on academic inventors;

Producing a Database on Academic Patenting in Europe (APE-INV Database)
  to produce a freely available database on “academic patenting in Europe”, that will contain reliable and comparable information on the contribution of European academic scientists to technology transfer via patenting, and that researchers will be able to update in the future.

Editing joint publications using the Data-set
  to experiment the database opportunities, editing one or more joint publications containing original applications of the newly created databases;

Designing a Method to allow users to correct data
  to devise a method for collecting the database users’ feedbacks on the quality of the data, one that will allow users to enter their own corrections to the identification errors. Users’ corrections are particularly important in this case, since the identification of inventors rely on algorithms that make use of information on each inventor’s social network: so users’ corrections to the identity of one inventor may lead to correct the identity of others.

Cooperating with established institutions in the field of patent data
  A unique window of opportunity has been recently opened by the European Patent Office (EPO), and its collaboration with the OECD Patent Statistics Task Force for the creation of PATSTAT, a new database for statistical use (joint with WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organization, and Eurostat).

APE-INV program will contribute to create a community of PATSTAT users, and to turn PATSTAT into a reference source for the worldwide community of social scientists engaged in science and technology studies. Besides making use of PATSTAT data, APE-INV will try to establish co-operation ties with all the insititutions involved in its development.

Participation to APE-INV

Currently, the APE-INV programme is supported by 9 ESF member organizations, namely:

• Austrian Science Fund (FWF)
• National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS), Belgium
• Research Foundation Flanders (FWO), Belgium
• The National Foundation of Science, Higher Education and Technological Development of the Republic of Croatia (NZZ),
• Danish Social Science Research Council
• German Research Foundation (DFG)
• National Research Council (CNR), Italy
• Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO)
• Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), Spain
• Swedish Research Council (VR)
• Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)

However, APE-INV is willing to enlarge the participation to other countries, in order to become a pan-European research networking programme. In addition, collaboration with scientists worldwide is encouraged, and will be pursued with the help of subsidiary funds.

Paris Reloaded

This is about Name Game workshop held in Paris last 25, 26 november.

The workshop has been organized by my roommate Francesco Lissoni in the frame of APE-INV whose goals are measuring the extent of academic patenting, and studying its determinants, in order to improve our understanding of university–industry relationships, and of their influence on academic researchers’ choice of scientific targets and norms of conduct.
So an important issue is building a database about inventors, and the first step consists in cleaning and standardizing the information on inventors we can derive from patent data.
The Name Game workshop aimed at convening as many researchers as possible with experience in this field, in order to allow them to share their methodologies and possibly reach a consensus on how to harmonize their future efforts.
It has been hosted by OST, the Observatoire des sciences et des techniques.

There eventually I had the chance of making a demi-decent presentation of the job done about EPO inventors in the last few years. If you want you can find it here