File Name: USapp_provisional

Observations: 907,906

Sorted by Unique Index: app_publication_num*app_publication_kind*provisional_index

(Note this files contains the information only for publication years 2005-2012)

Description: In the patent application process, patents sometimes are given provisional application numbers that are different from the ones use in the published applications. It is useful to have the provisional number for linking patents across countries. When claiming foreign priority, an application may use the provisional number.

We note that the file only contains the provisional publication number for years 2005 and beyond. The xml format of the raw text file before 2005 is different from 2005 and after. We had a problem collecting the provisional number for years 2000 to 2004 and we have not yet gone back to recollect it. Our study focuses only on publication years 2005-2010, so we didn’t need to do this for our study.

Variables

Variable	Type	Len	Columns in Ascii File	Description
app_publication_num	Char	20	1-20	The application number of the published application
app_publication_kind	Char	3	21-23	The application kind of the published application
app_ref_type	Char	15	24-38	Code used by USPTO.
provisional_doc_number	Char	10	39-48	The provisional document number
provisional_doc_date	Char	8	49-56	The provisional document date
provisional_country	Char	10	57-66	This equals “US”
provisional_index	Num	8	67-74	The sort order that the provisional document number is listed