Total Words in a Patent Field (ANA_TW)

AcclaimIP counts the total number of words found in each patent.  To find patents by the number of words in the document, use the ANA_TW field.

This field is helpful when doing analyses of patenting trends in a portfolio.  You can try doing a series of range queries to bucket patents by the number of words, and then chart them together using the multi-series charting options.

The ANA_TW field is academically interesting because the length of a patent is an indicator of the amount of work required to create the patent.  For example, at the time of writing, using the ANA_TW, you can see that 29% of all small entity utility patents have fewer than 5,000 words, while only 22.3% of all utility patents have fewer than 5,000 words.  Why the difference?  Do small entities have less sophisticated inventions requiring shorter patents, or do patent agents/attorneys feel pressure from their larger clients to write more comprehensive patents?

Side Note - The majority of very long patents are in the fields of chemistry, so now you know why your patent law firm charges more for chemistry patents than mechanical arts patents.

Examples

The multi-series chart above shows all US Utility Patents charted over time by patent length.  As you can see, the drop-off around 2012 to 2013 is quite a bit.  This chart was printed in 2017, so all the patent data should be in for those years.  So we have to look at major events in the 2012-2013 time frame in the US patent arena.  The biggest was the America Invents Act.  So one has to assume that this was the cause of the drop off in patents with less words.

Note that this chart could have been applied to a specific assignee, or a specific law firm, or any of a number of similar options for a more granular analysis.

ANA_TW:[* to 1000]  -->  Finds all patents with 1,000 words or fewer.

ANA_TW:[1000 to 5000]  -->  Finds all patents with 1,000 to 5,000 words.

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