This 82-page report presents data from a survey of three populations of patent information users: major law firms, major companies, and research–oriented universities. The study gives detailed information on use of specific patent information sources, as well as details of patent information spending, archiving, information search training and much more. The report helps its end users to answer questions such as: How do patent information users view sources such as Chemical Abstracts, Google Patents Search, Westlaw Patents, PatBase and many others. What has been the impact free patent information sources? What are some of the most trusted sources for patent information from China? Or South Korea? Which sources are being used for patent royalty information and what types of organizations are spending money on this information? What percentage of patent information is purchased in a digital format? What kind of information related to their patents do patent holders archive?
Just a few of the report’s many findings are that:
-
Only 27.7% of universities in the sample collected information on foreign patents related to their own, while 100% of companies with more than $1 billion in revenues and 55.6% of those with less than $1 billion in revenues collected such information.
-
Law firms in the sample spent a mean of $29,525 and a median of $8,500 respectively on patent searches in 2014.
-
81% of patent information purchased by organizations in the sample was in digital rather than paper format.
Data in the report is broken out by type of institution and the work role of the survey respondent, i.e., librarian, technology executive, attorney, patent agent, etc.