Patent documents often do not contain an assignee name.  Blank assignee names is more common in patent applications than granted patents.  AcclaimIP guesses the assignee for you.  We can guess names with a high degree of accuracy by analyzing inventor names, agent names, locations, dates and technology classes.

AcclaimIP includes the guessed assignee name in a field code called ANG (Assignee Normalized Guessed).  Note that the ANG field contains both the guessed and the canonical (not guesses) assignee name from the ANC field.

Also a name may change from a guessed variant to a canonical variant if an anonymous patent application is granted with an assignee name.  AcclaimIP will update the current assignee of the application with the official name.

The original assignee is the name that appears on the document's official PDF.  The original assignee is usually the applicant, and may or may not be the current assignee of the patent.

Unlike the Current Assignee, the Original Assignee name never changes in our data (except for normalization).

The field code is ANO (Assignee Normalized Original).

The ANO field is normalized to fix misspellings, unnecessary long variants of the entity name, and creative punctuation.

The MDATE field code is one of the most powerful tools you have at your disposal.  It allows you to analyze abandonment and renewal behavior with precision.  Some of the uses for MDATE include:

• Which patents are expired and in the public domain
• Which patents can still be resurrected
• Which patents are currently in their grace period?
• What is the abandonment behavior of Company XYZ, in which classes, and how has it changed over time.
• Predict to the penny future fees required to maintain a portfolio and when the payments will be due.

To take advantage of the Power of MDATE, a little background is required.

When a patent document is published the publication date is stored in the issue date field which uses the field code ISD.  ISD is aliased to the field code PD (publication date). If it is easier to remember, use PD.  

There are two different names for the same field because when you think of granted patents, you normally think in terms of its "issue date."  On the other hand, when you think of published applications, you normally think of its "publication date."  In either case, the data is stored in the same field in AcclaimIP's database and PD or ISD will query it.

As with all other field codes, ISD can be used in conjunction with any number of field codes to develop complex queries.

The patent Title can be searched using the TTL field code.

The examples below can be used in conjunction with any number of other field codes to construct complex queries.