This article describes the patent and trademark data behind IP Pilot. It covers the filings and the representative data, where they come from, how complete they are and how often they are updated.
For coverage by jurisdiction, see the data coverage table in the product: app.ip-pilot.com/resources/data-coverage. It shows the detailed coverage for each office and year. This article does not repeat it.
1. Where the patent data comes from #
The main dataset is DOCDB, a worldwide bibliographic database from the European Patent Office. It holds over 100 million patent applications from more than 120 jurisdictions. Most of them are utility patents, and a small number are utility models. The coverage is similar to the European Patent Office’s Espacenet.
For some countries, DOCDB is incomplete or not up to date. India, the ASEAN countries, New Zealand, South Africa and Mexico had large gaps, so IP Pilot adds the filings from these countries directly.
IP Pilot then adds agent information from local registers around the world. This agent information is what connects law firms with each other, and law firms with their clients. In some jurisdictions, the filings do not include agent information. IP Pilot then fills the gap as far as possible from the PCT and regional filings in the same patent family.
2. Where the trademark data comes from #
The database holds over 170 million trademark filings from more than 180 jurisdictions. All major jurisdictions are covered.
Trademark data differs from patent data in one important way. It is hard to group trademarks into families from their priority filing information. To show case exchange between firms, IP Pilot must create these families itself. Its algorithm uses several factors, such as filing dates, verbal elements and applicant names.
Most filings connect into proper families. It is not possible to match all filings internationally, and this will not change. Some filings therefore form a trademark family of their own, and some international connections can be missing from the case exchange data.
This does not affect Search or the Overview tab of a profile, because they do not use these connections.
3. How often the data is updated #
The data providers send raw data every day. Before IP Pilot can use it, the data must be cleaned, processed and enriched. This step runs algorithms across the full dataset and takes almost a week. Unless something unexpected happens, IP Pilot updates its data at least once a month, and sometimes more often.
4. How complete the representative information is #
In general, the database contains every representative with at least one publicly available application since 1980. Most IP representatives are in the raw data. Some law firms and representatives are not included, in these cases:
- The application documents do not name the representative.
- The law firm works only at national level, and agent information is not available for that country.
- For trademarks only: the application is filed under the Madrid Protocol, and no refusal required the applicant to appoint a domestic representative.
The Glossary defines what counts as a representative, and how a representative differs from an attorney, a law firm or an agent.
