Patents, Designs and Trade Marks, 2010: Secure Access

<p>The <i>Patents, Designs and Trade Marks, 2010: Secure Access</i> dataset includes details on applications to the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) for patents, designs and trade marks by businesses or individuals.<br> <br> The patent file holds the main information for all patents in Great Britain attained through the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills' Optics extract in June/July 2010. The file includes patent applications filed between 1978 and 2009. There should be no multiple observations due to the uniqueness and single occurrence of an application number within these datasets. A patent can have more than one IPC classification, depending on how many purposes it fulfils.<br> <br> The trade mark analysable dataset was created using the trade mark licensee data, which relates to trademarks applied for with the IPO. The data were extracted in July 2010 and include applications filed between 1876 and 2010. The licensee data is that provided to the IPO's external customers and holds the same information as contained within the <a href="http://www.ipo.gov.uk/" title="IPO">IPO</a> website. This dataset represents one of four relating to trade marks; this covers all trade marks applied for within the UK - there are three other datasets relating to trade marks applied for via the Madrid UK/Madrid EP agreements and Office of Harmonization for the Internal Market. <br> <br> The UK design data represent all designs applied for with the IPO between 1974 and 2010. The data were extracted in May 2010.<br> <br> The patent, design and trade mark data provided are readily available from online sources. The data are provided for Secure Access so that users can link the data to Secure Access business surveys using Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR) reference numbers, which are anonymous but unique reference numbers assigned to business organisations. Other Secure Access business surveys with which users may wish to combine the IPO data include the <i>Annual Respondents Database</i> (SN 6644), the <i>UK Innovation Survey</i> (SN 6699), and the <i>Business Expenditure on Research and Development</i> survey (SN 6690).<br> <br> In preparing the patent, design and trade mark data for release, certain variables that can lead to the identification of businesses or individuals on the IPO website have been anonymised. These variables include applicant numbers, application numbers and design numbers.<br> <br> The patent data include postcodes for a proportion of the applicants. The trade mark data include the country of the proprietor. The design data include no spatial units.</p><p>For Secure Lab projects applying for access to this study as well as to SN 6697 <span style="font-style: italic;">Business Structure Database</span> and/or SN 7683<em> Business Structure Database Longitudinal</em>, only postcode-free versions of the data will be made available.</p>