How are these statistics useful?
Useful for researching a company's technological research and development activity
By looking at patent statistics grouped by organization, you can view the amount of patent activity that has occurred within a specific timeframe for a particular company. Within the PTMD reports, data is usually presented for the last five years. When creating your own report, you can specify the timeframe.
Useful for researching a city, state or country in terms of its technological activity
By selecting a PTMD report, you can view patent activity by state. In addition, reports include data grouped by country allowing you to compare many geographic locations based on their patent activity. When creating your own report, you can also search by city which may be particularly useful for jobseeking purposes.
Useful for researching a specific type of technology
By looking at patent data grouped by technology, you can see who is particpating in what kinds of technological activity. Since patents are grouped by technology class and subclass, you should be familiar with the class system as used by the USPTO. To learn more about this, see our Engineering Library Patent Searching Tutorial.
Useful for researching an industry
By looking at patent activity by industry, you may look at pre-existing reports called "Patent Profiles" created by the USPTO. These reports exist for specific industries of interest for the government such as genetic engineering and nuclear energy. When creating your own report, researching by industry becomes more difficult.
To continue, Click Patent Reports.
