I provide a primer on six recent large‐scale historical patent data sets for use in innovation research. I discuss how each data set is constructed, the types of patent information included in each, and the quality and completeness of each. Throughout, I emphasize when our knowledge of the history of invention is dependent on the data source used and provide recommendations about which data set is most likely to be best for different contexts. Overall, these data sets paint a remarkably consistent picture of the history of U.S. invention. When the data sets do disagree, these differences tend to be minor, although I highlight some important exceptions. I further describe several “niche” historical patent data sets that allow researchers to study institutional contexts that cannot be studied using modern data. Finally, I discuss features of patent data that are not available for the historical patents but are available for modern patents.

中文翻译：

---

专利历史数据：从业人员指南

我提供了六个最新的大规模历史专利数据集的入门知识，这些数据集可用于创新研究。我将讨论每个数据集的构建方式，每个数据集所包含的专利信息的类型以及每个数据集的质量和完整性。在整个过程中，我会强调我们对发明历史的了解何时取决于所使用的数据源，并提供有关哪种数据集最有可能在不同情况下最合适的建议。总体而言，这些数据集描绘了美国发明历史的非常一致的图景。当数据集确实存在差异时，尽管我强调了一些重要的例外情况，但这些差异往往很小。我进一步描述了几个“利基”历史专利数据集，这些数据集使研究人员能够研究无法使用现代数据进行研究的机构环境。最后，