Company, Group, Patent and Inventor Data for Pharmaceuticals, 1988-2015

The data include information on (1) Pharmaceutical companies; (2) Pharma Group each of these companies belong to; (3) Patent application to the European Patent Office by pharmaceutical company (assignee); (4) Name of inventors (i.e. employees of a pharmaceutical company) that appear on the patent. The data include unique identifiers that can be used to link a pharma company to a pharma group and to link a pharma company to the patent assignee (i.e. the legal entity that applies for the patent). These data are particularly useful to track the employment history of inventors following a M&A. For instance, Schering-Plough was acquired by Merck and Co in 2009. So if a scientist working for Shering-Plough before 2009 appears after the acquisition on a patent owned by Merck, we can infer that this employee has not changed company (i.e. she keeps working for the company that bought the company she was working for).