Content Analysis Toolkit for Academic Research (CATAR)

To analyze patents from USPTO, please look at the details below.

To analyze other types of text data, please refer to: http://web.ntnu.edu.tw/~samtseng/CATAR/.

Notes:

1. If you are clustering 1) very short texts or 2) only a few documents (for verification), co-word clustering would be very sensitive to the choice of the parameters (such as minimum thresholds of term occurrence) and the stop words.
2. The examples in the tutorials (CATAR_Tutorial.ppt or CATAR_Tutorial_en.ppt) use very low threshold values (e.g., 0.0) to get the results. After installation of CATAR on your computer, you should run sam.bat (under src sub-folder) to see if your results are almost the same as those in the tutorials.

Introduction

The steps described below are for analyzing patent documents (in HTML file format) from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). For a set of USPTO patents, CATAR can help you to:

1. Automatically download each patent document (in HTML), given a set of patent numbers in a text file.
2. Parse the HTML file to get various information and save them into a Database Management System (DBMS). Currently, the used DBMS is Microsoft Access.
3. Do some analyses in the MS Access file using the queries already prepared in the Access file.
4. Do more patent analyses using the CATAR functions like those (overview or break-down analyses) described at: http://web.ntnu.edu.tw/~samtseng/CATAR/.

Some knowledge about SQL (Structure Query Language) and DBMS (Database Management System) is preferred.

Steps to analyze the USPTO patents

1. Prepare the patent set:

   Prepare a pure text file having a set of patent numbers, with each line containing a single patent number.

   Normally you would query USPTO with its advanced search: http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search-adv.htm to collect a set of patents for analysis.

   Note: This is a crucial step, because it affects any statistics you get in later steps.

   You should place this file under a certain folder, like the one already in the CATAR folder: CATAR\Source_Data\DL_DNN\DL_DNN_1636.txt.

2. Edit Patent.ini:

   Edit CATAR\src\Patent.ini to add a new group. As an example:

   [DL_DNN]
   PatentDir=..\Source_Data\DL_DNN\patents
   DSN=DL_DNN
   SaveDescription=1
   

3. Duplicate an empty MS Access file

   Under the CATAR\src folder in the DOS command line, run the copy file command, e.g.:

   C:\CATAR\src> copy Patent_org.mdb ..\Source_Data\DL_DNN\DL_DNN.mdb
   

4. Set the DSN (Data Source Name)

   Double click the file: C:/Windows/SysWOW64/odbcad32.exe to open the 32 bits "ODBC Data Source Administrator" (ODSA).

   Click on the "System DSN" Tab on the top of the ODSA window and then click "Add" on the right.

   Then choose "Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)" and click on "Finish".

   Assign a DSN name and select the appropriate source. Select the Access database file you want to associate with the DSN you just created. For example, you may set a DSN named: DL_DNN and associate it with the file: "C:\CATAR\Source_Data\DL_DNN\DL_DNN.mdb". Click "OK" to finish this step.

   If you still have difficulty in this step, google the usage of "ODBC Data Source Administrator". You should use the 32 bits version, not the 64 bits version.

5. Start to run CATAR:

   Now you can run CATAR to download and parse the patent set, by running a command like this:

   C:\CATAR\src>perl -s patent.pl -Odb -Ogroup=DL_DNN -OPat2DB ..\Source_Data\DL_DNN\DL_DNN_1636.txt
   

   When this command is running, it will tell you the progress and something that may be abnormal, such as truncated information when saving information into the Access file.

   Ignore the abnormal messages and watch out for the failure messages which tell that some patents can not be downloaded, due to network traffic or the USPTO server's latency.

   Do not worry about these failures.

   Just re-run the above command. Those that have been downloaded will not be fetched again. Only those failed will be downloaded. You could run the same command as many times as you want, until no failure is reported.

6. Open the MS Access file:

   You can check the tables to know what information have been downloaded and parsed. Also check the queries to have some statistics about your patent set.

For further analysis, please check: http://web.ntnu.edu.tw/~samtseng/CATAR or send me an email: samtseng@ntnu.edu.tw for clarity.

Or, you may do your own analyses (and feedback to me for future development).