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7.6.1Methodology for geographic assignment


Geographic allocation

Flanders has a long history of reporting of patent-statistics in the Flemish indicator book. In the Indicator Book, a patent is labelled as ‘Flemish’ if the address of the applicant and/or the inventor is in Flanders. The same approach is used for other countries and regions.

Organization types 

A distinction can be made between different organization types namely: corporations, higher education institutions, public research organizations, government agencies, hospitals and individuals (and a very small residual category "unidentified"). The geographical allocation by organization type is done solely on the basis of applicant address.

We note here that the category 'higher education institutions' for Flanders has been expanded to include the SOCs imec and VIB, following the approach in the Flemish Indicator Book.

Gender allocation of inventors

A distinction can be made between female and male inventors based on the first name of the inventors. A name + gender overview incorporating several sources is used for this purpose. This overview is country specific, so the allocation of a name to gender may differ depending on the inventors address (e.g. Andrea in BE versus Andrea in IT).

Sources are:

  • gender name lists from official statistical websites of the different countries
  • gender name lists, indicating the percentage probability of a specific name being assigned to a particular gender1
  • WIPO gender names list2

A name + gender overview is prepared for inventors from the following 23 countries: BE, CZ, DE, DK, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HU, IE, IN, IT, LU, NL, PL, PT, RU, SE, TR, US, AE, MA. It is noted that Asian names were not allocated to a gender because of their statistical ambiguity.3

Inventors are considered once they have at least 1 EPO patent application or 1 granted USPTO patent.

 

1 e.g. http://www.studentsoftheworld.info/penpals/stats.php3?Pays=IND; http://www.behindthename.com/names/usage/indian; https://www.nordicnames.de/wiki/Category:Danish_Female_Names

2 World Gender Name Dictionary - WGND; see https://www.wipo.int/publications/en/details.jsp?id=4125

3 Source: ECOOM, nota 24 juni 2022