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ANNOTATION GUIDELINES

Warning

GitHub markdown does not fully support visual annotation components (e.g. entity boxes) used below. We invite user interested in the annotation guidelines to download the documents and open it in a development environment supporting extended markdown syntax (e.g. MacDown, PyCharm, etc) and/or save it as a pdf.

Preliminary comments

The patent corpus we consider for East Germany (the German Democratic Republic) has 2 format categories and spans the period 1950-1992.

Format 1, from to DD1 to DD123499.

This format spans the period 1951-1976.

Information display

The document has a header with its publication number ("Patentschrift Nr"). The assignee is referred to as "Inhaber" while the inventor is referred to as "Erfinder". When the same person is both the assignee and the inventor, he might be referred to as "Erfinder zugleich Inhaber".

Well often, a geographical indication is given with the name of the assignee or the inventor. Typically, this is the name of a city (e.g Leipzig). It can be followed by the name of the country (especially when the latter is not Germany). The name of the city is not always given though (cf DD79836).

Within this format, some minor changes occur over time. For instance, the specifically German technological class is reported up until patent DD117152, after which only the international class (IPC) is reported on the document. Some patents will have a body of text in their first page, while others don't, but information we are interested in will always be in the header.

Information extraction

We extract 4 different "entities" from the header of DD patents in format category 1.

Entity Content E.g
ASG Assignee full name Inhaber: Rhône Poulenc S.AASG, Paris (Frankreich).
INV  Inventor full name (Erfinder) Erfinder: Dr. Karl JellinekINV, WD
LOC Location of the assignee/inventor Erfinder: Jean Auguste Phelisse, Lyon (Frankreich)LOC.
OCC Occupation of the assignee/inventor (academic title) Dr.OCC Elisabeth Kob, WD.

These entities are tied together with 2 types of relations.

Relation Content E.g.
LOCATION Links an ASG/INV to a LOC Rhône Poulenc S.A ASG-->LOCATION-->Paris (Frankreich)LOC
OCCUPATION Links an ASG/INV to an OCC Dr OCC<--OCCUPATION<--Elisabeth Kob ASG

Format 2, from DD123500 onwards.

Information display

In this new format, relevant information is given in slots associated with a number.

For instance, the number 51 announces the (CPC) international technological class of the invention. The number 54 gives the title of the invention.

The number 72 announces information about the inventor: identity and geographical information. The number 44 indicates the publication date.

The number 71 announces the applicant/assignee but sometimes refers to another slot to signal that this particular slot already contains the name of the applicant (e.g, DD126868, DD126858). In particular, a foreign assignee is more likely to be reported in line 73. Line 74 contains the name (and well often, the location) of the legal representative, which we do not tag.

Information extraction

We extract 4 different "entities" from the header of DD patents in format category 2.

Entity Content E.g
ASG Assignee full name Maschinenfabrik Köppern GmbH & Co KGASG, Hattingen, DE
INV  Inventor full name (Erfinder) (72) Bergendahl, Hans-Georg INV, DE
LOC Location of the assignee/inventor Knieling, Norbert, Dipl-Phys., 12439 Berlin, DELOC.
OCC Occupation of the assignee/inventor (academic title) Knieling, Norbert, Dipl-Phys.OCC, 12439 Berlin, DE.

These entities are tied together with 2 types of relations.

Relation Content E.g.
LOCATION Links an ASG/INV to a LOC Maschinenfabrik Köppern GmbH & Co KG ASG-->LOCATION--> Hattingen, DE LOC
OCCUPATION Links an ASG/INV to an OCC Lämmer, Hans-Georg ASG-->OCCUPATION-->Dipl-Ing. OCC

Entities

Format 1

INV

General case

The tag INV refers to the full name of an inventor. This is a person that is not referred to as the assignee and is specifically referred to as the inventor (Erfinder).

Specific cases
  • Inventor only: some early patents report an inventor but no assignee. We tag the inventor as it is mentioned nonetheless. See example 2.
  • Secret inventor: in some patents, it is specifically mentioned that the inventor remains anonymous. In this case, we do not tag anything. See example 3.
  • Inventor=Assignee: sometimes, the inventor and the assignee are the same person and the document won't repeat the name; this may be signalled by the phrase "Erfinder zugleich Inhaber". In this case, we tag the name only as the inventor, because a single group of words cannot be tagged twice. See example 4.

Examples

  1. Standard Case with a person, from patent DD79836

    Erfinder: Wilhelm UhrigINV, WD

  2. Inventor only, from patent DD5076

    Erfinder: Dr ALEXANDER PRANSCHKEINV, Schwarzheide. Dr ERWIN SAUTERINV, Schwarzheide.

  3. Inventor only, from patent DD4075

    Erfinderbenennung ist ausgesetzt.

  4. Inventor=Assignee, from patent DD15399

    Erfinder zugleich Inhaber: Zalter GleißnerINV, Weißenfeis (Saale)

ASG

General case

The tag ASG refers to the full name(s) of the person(s) or firm(s) who own(s) the patent rights.

Specific cases
  • Rechtsträger: Some patents distinguish between Inhaber and Rechtsträger: we keep tagging the Inhaber person as the assignee. See example 2.

Examples

  1. Standard Case with a firm, from patent DD79836

    Inhaber: Dr. Plate GmbHASG, Bonn, WD.

  2. Rechtsträger, from patent DD33554

    Erfinder: Manfred Gerlach, Dresden; Kurt Jäger, Dresden; Dipl-Ing. Gerhard Kasche, Dresden.

    Inhaber: Eigentum des VolkesASG; Kurt JägerASG, Dresden; Dipl-Ing. Gerhard KascheASG, Dresden.

    Rechtsträger: VEB Gasturbinenbau und Energiemaschinenentwicklung Pirna, Pirna.

LOC

General case

The tag LOC refers to the full location sequence of an assignee or inventor. In some patents, no location is reported (see DD86584).

Specific cases
  • District: The patents might report the district within a given city, which we tag along. See example 3.

Examples

  1. Standard Case with a location for the (foreign) assignee and a location for the (foreign) inventor, from patent DD76817

    Erfinder: Abraham A.Goldberg, USALOC.

    Inhaber: COLUMBIA BROADCASTING SYSTEM, INC., New York, USALOC.

  2. Standard Case with German patentees, from patent DD69242 Erfinder: Dr-Ing. Walter Froede, Neckarsulm (WD)LOC.

    Inhaber: NSU-Motorenwenke AG, Neckarsulm (WD)LOC

    Wandel GmbH, Lindau (WD)LOC

  3. District from patent DD62143

    Erfinder zugleich Inhaber: Dr. Wolfram Jenichen, Schönow (b. Berlin)LOC.

OCC

General case

This tag concerns the university title of inventors/assignees. When none is reported, we do not tag anything.

Examples

  1. Standard Case with several inventors from patent DD1393

    Erfinder: Dr.OCC GERHARD HANSEN, DrOCC PAUL HEINZ KECK, Jena. Dipl.-Ing.OCC KARL ILMER, Jena.

Format 2

INV

General case

The tag INV refers to the full name of an inventor. This is a person that is not referred to as the assignee and is specifically referred to as the inventor (Erfinder).

Specific cases
  • Secret inventor: some publications do not report the name of the inventor on purpose. This may be signalled by the sentence "Erfinder: werden aug Antrag nicht genannt". See example 2.
  • Inventor=Assignee: sometimes, the inventor and the assignee are the same person and the document won't repeat the name; this may be signalled by the phrase "siehe (72)" in line 71 (where the assignee should be). In this case, we tag the name only as the inventor, because a single group of words cannot be tagged twice. See example 3.

Examples

  1. Standard Case with several inventors, from patent DD251362

    (72) Kolitsch, AndreasINV, Dr.; Richter, EdgarINV, Dr.; Mende, EdgarINV; Polnik, FrankINV, DD

  2. Secret inventor, from patent DD126770

    Erfinder: werden aug Antrag nicht genannt

  3. Inventor=Assignee, from patent DD148904

    (71) siehe (72).

    (72) Trabert, ErichINV, DD

ASG

General case

The tag ASG refers to the full name(s) of the person(s) or firm(s) who own(s) the patent rights.

Specific cases
  • Foreign Assignee: When the assignee is non-German, it might be reported in line (73) instead of (71). See example 2.

Examples

  1. Standard Case with a government-run company, from patent DD133115

    (71) Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR, Zentralinstitut for Isotopen- und StrahlenforschungASG, Leipzig , DD

  2. Foreign Assignee, from patent DD202259 (71) siehe (73)

    (73) ITERA COMPONENTS ABASG, GOETEBORG, SE

LOC

General case

The tag LOC refers to the full location sequence of an assignee or inventor. Typically, only the country will be reported for inventors, but greater details may be given for assignees. Here are a few abbreviations that are used throughout the patents.

  • SU: Soviet Union
  • HU: Hungary
  • CS: Tchecoslovaquia
  • BG: Bulgaria
  • WD: West-Germany.
Specific cases
  • Full Address: There is quite a number of Format 2 patents which report the full address of an assignee or inventor, and in this case we tag it all. See example 2.

Examples

  1. Standard Case with the country and the city from patent DD141623

    (71) Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR, Berlin, DDLOC.

  2. Full Address from patent DD251362

    (71) Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR, Otto-Nuschke Straße 22/23, Berlin 1080, DDLOC.

OCC

General case

This tag concerns the university title of inventors/assignees. When none is reported, we do not tag anything.

Examples

  1. Standard Case with several inventors from patent DD220001

    (72): Lämmer, Hans-Georg, Ing-Dipl.OCC; Sommer, Peter; Matzner, Dieter, Dipl-Ing.OCC, DD.

Relationships

See the common annotation guidelines.

Examples

Example 1: Format 1 (DD-1300)

Example 1: format 1

Example 2: Format 2 (DD-142651)

Example 2: format 2