User:Econterms/WikiProject Patents

Lightning talk presentation to WikiConference North America 2018

• WIkidata can record basic information (not detailed information) about tens of millions of patents, someday. Right now there are only a few hundred.
• We have some basic standards on how to record a patent. We discuss that below. Some things need fixing and new properties.
• The WikiProject Patents page: Wikidata's WikiProject Patents

• Here we'll focus on recording patents from before 1923. Patents that old aren't copyrighted, aren't secret, and no longer have claims that still apply (to my knowledge -- there could be an exception).
• I am familiar with historical European and North American patents, less so with modern ones.

• A patent item should be an instance of (P31) either patent (Q253623) or U.S. Patent (Q43305660), perhaps both. That property is the one to query (search) that is unique to patents.
• Page title can be of this form: Patent US-1906-827017, Patent CA-1914-153820 -- or another form if the editor prefers
• Country where filed: Here are three options; freely use any or all. They express slightly different things. Is one best?
  • Use issued by (P2378) and identify the office with which the patent was filed -- generally a bureau that is an instance of patent office (Q1148446)) -- e.g. US Patent and Trademark Office, Japan Patent office (JPO)
  • Use applies to jurisdiction (P1001) and then the Q-number of the national government/country.
  • Use country (P17) and then the Q-number of the national government/country. It does not need to be a country that still exists. This technique is perhaps more flexible, and it will be necessary to use this option if it is not known what bureau received the patent application.
• Filing date: Formal date of submission of the patent application, and generally speaking the date on which the patent goes into force legally once it's approved
• Grant date: Certification by a government that the patent is accepted, and applies in the jurisdiction.
  • Filing and grant seem to be more complicated when there is an international phase, since the later Patent and Cooperation Treaty
• Applicant(s) -- there's always at least one ; can include company or university or government lab
• Inventors: Zero or more; Might like to mark their order -- some are notable enough for wikidata, others just name strings
• Title: A string in the language of
• Patent number -- not all patents can use the current property "patentnumber" which has the format US###### -- and seems to require that the patent is on google patents -- what number do we use if patentnumber doesn't work?
• Page title on Wikidata
• Parent patent or child patent
• Assignee
• Pointer to URL somewhere with more information, possibly the full text and diagrams -- THERE IS NO ONE PERFECT SITE FOR THIS. Wikidata could be the best site for this, someday.

Possible good outcome of getting these basics into Wikidata -- We could add patent offices to the Authority Control line, maybe (?)

like USPTO, or WIPO, and if the user clicks there would get an automatic list of patents from Wikidata

• some patents could/should be transcribed onto Wikisource

Next steps

• I will start to upload new patent items using QuickStatements, still just a few
• Here's the QuickStatements: https://tools.wmflabs.org/quickstatements/#/batch
• Any input? How should this be done? What would be useful to you?