European corporate hierarchy data added to Delphion site

Citation

Blake, M. (2004), "European corporate hierarchy data added to Delphion site", The Electronic Library, Vol. 22 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/el.2004.26322bab.015

European corporate hierarchy data added to Delphion site

Key European patent data are now available via Thomson Delphion. Through an extension of its partnership with CHI Research, Inc., Delphion has added European corporate hierarchy data to its existing US data, creating the only resource where this information can be leveraged across patent collections.

Without corporate hierarchy data, assignee searching and analysis can be problematic because separate patent applications often use different forms of the company name, requiring users to identify all variations in order to get complete information. In addition, patent documents identify the assignee that owned the patent when it was granted, but companies merge, get acquired, spin off and change names. Patents can also be sold or transferred from one company to another. Delphion leverages corporate hierarchy data to standardize corporate names and incorporate merger and acquisition activity, making it possible for users to find all patents from a corporate entity, even when names are misspelled.

“The enhancement allows all Delphion customers to perform better assignee searching and analysis across more collections,” said Bob Smith, vice president of product management for Thomson Scientific. “Thomson Delphion is the only patent research resource that incorporates this information.”

As a result of this enhancement, the Delphion coverage of corporate hierarchy data now includes the top 1,900 patent holders representing 45,000 separate entities.