The careers and co-authorship networks of U.S. patent-holders, since 1975

We describe disambiguation algorithms that identify individual inventors from the U.S.patent database. The identification enables construction of social networks based on patent co-authorship. We will eventually provide descriptive statistics of individual and collaborative variables and illustrated examples of networks for an individual, an organization, a technology, and a region. The data and code will be publically available for community use and improvement and will enable updating as frequently as new patents are issued.