Chapter 1 Preface
Welcome to the Second edition of the WIPO Manual on Open Source Patent Analytics. The first edition of the WIPO Manual on Open Source Patent Analytics broke new ground in patent analytics by documenting and exploring free and open source tools that could be used for patent analytics. The coverage of free tools ranges from databases to visualisation tools and the use of programming languages.
Between 2016 and 2019, the first edition of the Manual became the basis for a series of national and regional training workshops held in Brazil, South Africa, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand that offered hands on training in the patent analytics. In the period since the last update to the Manual in 2019 many of the tools have been update and new tools have emerged. The time is therefore ripe for the second edition as the basis for future practical work.
The second edition of the Manual updates the information on existing tools and adds a small number of new chapters on more recent tools and trends in patent analytics. The Manual is now organised around a Patent Analytics Workflow developed by Paul Oldham and Irene Kitsara during the patent analytics training workshops. That workflow can be used by anyone from beginners in patent analytics through to advanced users who are using programming languages and machine learning models. In the coming months the Manual and the patent analytics workflow will be linked to the WIPO Handbook on Patent Analytics.
1.1 Acknowledgements
The first and second editions of the WIPO Manual on Open Source Tools for Patent Analytics were written with the generous financial support of the Patent Office of Japan (JPO). The Manual was prepared under the direction of Mr. Yo Takagi (Assistant Director General) and under the supervision of Mr. Alejandro Roca Campaña (Senior Director) and Mr. Andrew Czajkowski (Head of Section). We are grateful to Craig Dsouza (WIPO) for his valuable assistance in checking the second edition of the Manual and Lakshmi Supriya (WIPO) for her support. We thank Jasmine Kindness (One World Analytics) and Christine Wanjiru (Amband, Kenya and One World Analytics) for their contribution to reviewing the Manual and preparing supporting materials. We thank Enric Escorsa (WIPO) for his contributions to the creation of the online course and data packages that support the Manual and accompanying Handbook.
1.2 Further information
The electronic version of the Manual, as well as all datasets mentioned in the Manual and used for the various exercises can be downloaded from the Manual Github repository.
1.3 Conditions of use
This publication is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC-BY) and may be freely used and shared subject to attribution. Please cite as:
Paul Oldham (2022) The WIPO Manual on Open Source Analytics (2nd edition). Geneva: World Intellectual Property Organization.
Contact e-mail: patent.information@wipo.int