Patent Assignee-Firm Bridge with Web Search Results

In this memo, we construct a patent assignee-firm longitudinal bridge between U.S. patent assignees and firms using firm-level administrative data from the U.S. Census Bureau with web search results. We match granted patents applied between 1976 and 2016 to the U.S. firms recorded in the Longitudinal Business Database (LBD) in the Census Bureau. Building on existing algorithms in the literature, we first use the assignee name, address (state and city), and year information to link the two datasets. We then introduce a novel search-aided algorithm. Overall, we are able to match 88.2% and 80.1% of all U.S. patents and assignees respectively. In particular, the search-aided algorithm significantly improves the matching results by accounting for 7% and 2.9% of matches at the patent and assignee level, respectively. We also find that the match rates accounted for by the search-aided algorithm have substantially increased over time, which highlights its importance in more recent periods. We contribute to the existing literature by 1) improving the match rates and quality with the web search-aided algorithm, and 2) providing the longest and longitudinally consistent crosswalk between patent assignees and LBD firms. (All results reported in the abstract were cleared for release under CBDRB-FY22-P2095-R9872).