PatentSight distinguishes between six different owner types; they are Company, Government, Inventor, Natural Person, Non-Practicing Entities (NPE), and Research Institution and each one has a specific definition and a different symbol in the Owner summary.
PatentSight distinguishes between six different owner types as outlined below:
| Owner Type: Company Entities that can be identified as, e.g., business entities or financial institutions. |
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| Owner Type: Government Entities that can be identified as, e.g., governments, governmental institutions, or state- or government owned enterprises. |
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| Owner Type: Inventor Individuals who can be identified as inventors. |
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| Owner Type: Natural Person Individuals who can be identified as natural persons. |
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| Owner Type: NPE Non-practicing entities that hold patents for licensing or litigation purposes, but do not commercialize the inventions protected by the patents. |
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| Owner Type: Research Institution Entities that can be identified as, e.g., universities, academies, hospitals and medical institutions or research centers. |
The owner types "Inventor" and "Natural Person" are patent owners, who hold patents on their own and either do not belong to a company, NPE, research or governmental institution, or who cannot be allocated to any ultimate owner for other reasons.
- An owner is categorized as "Inventor" if the applicant’s name and the inventor’s name stated in the member document(s) of a patent family are the same.
- An owner is categorized as "Natural Person" if the applicant’s name and the inventor’s name stated in the member document(s) of a patent family are not the same.
Note:
The owner types "Inventor" and "Natural Person" are not harmonized manually and have the Harmonization Level 0.