USPTO Patent Assignment Movements

Patents change hands constantly and the assignment record is public. This project maps the flow of IP from operating companies to non-practicing entities (patent trolls), identifies companies that sold patents in the 18 months before Chapter 11, and tracks security interest filings as a financial distress signal.

The primary deliverable is a 'distressed IP marketplace' map for a single year, with the top 20 transactions ranked by downstream impact.

Data sources: PatentsView bulk TSV downloads (free), USPTO Patent Assignment Database, Google Patents Public Data on BigQuery (free up to 1TB/month).