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Bibliometric Analysis of Core Papers Fundamental to Tissue Engineering


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Appendix 3 - Patent Database

Submitted with this report is a patent database assembled from the patents obtained from CHI and Derwent Databases. The database is in MS Access 2000 format and includes 4 main tables, several queries that were used for Figures 8-10, and a report used for the highly cited patent list in Appendix 4 Table D.

The main tables consist of the "Main Family Table" that contains a CHI patent family number, a representative patent number and title, a standardized assignee, priority country, and earliest publication date. The reader will recall that the patents have come from multiple databases, so that value added in this database is mainly the assembling of patent families (outlined above) and the standardization of assignee names. Note that there are two levels of assignee standardization. First, differences between standard name reporting across databases is accounted for (e.g Grace (W.R.) in some databases versus W.R. Grace in others). The second standardization involves grouping subsidiary patents with their parents (e.g. Marrow-Tech. Inc. is mapped to Advanced Tissue Sciences Inc.).

The second table "Identified Family Members" consists of each of the identified patent equivalents for each patent family. For example a patent family might consist of equivalents from the US, EP and elsewhere. Someone wishing to further analyze these individual patent documents can do so by using this table.

The third table "Citing Table" shows each of the citing patent documents from the US, EP, and PCT databases. Someone wishing to extend the analysis to look further into the patents that build upon tissue engineering can use this table.

Finally the "Citation Norms" table contains the average citation counts for tissue engineering patents of each year as explained above.


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