User:Econterms/Latin American patents project

• There are grants available from WMF through the WikiCite project: [1] and (less relevantly) [2]
• That could cover up to $10K. Applications are due at the end of September 2020, and the project must conclude and be reported on around May 1 2021.
• Prof. Bernardita Escobar Andrae of the University of Talca, Chile has been computerizing information about Chilean patents and trademarks of the period 1840-1910.. It will be useful for an extended business history of Chile. She was chief of the Chilean patent and trademark office..
• There is a historically interesting differences between the Chilean patent system and other national patent systems of that time. The evaluation of a patent application, equivalent to what in other countries is called the 'examination', was not done by patent office staff but by engineering experts hired on for each case. They filed detailed reports. That system calls for special study. What were the effects of this distinctive system? (cost, speed, effectiveness)
• Another unusual aspect of this particular data set is that we have most patent APPLICATIONS, only about half of which were granted. Studies of patents do not usually have information on patent applications which were denied.
• She has perhaps 80% of all the patent applications in this period in her data. It won't be possible to get to 100% because of the patent office fire in 1895. To get some of the remainder will require more primary research in the Chilean national archives, which are somewhat accessible even in the covid period. We budget for a research assistant to do this.
• We ask for $ mainly for labor time, replicate this site but in Spanish, import her data, then clean it up and try to advance it with images, wikilinks, links to other literature, classification, etc as we do on this site. Presumably we'll make interesting connections and serendipities. So it could be fun. Some of the funding will quite possibly have to go to her research assistants to get the job done as she envisions it. The management of the grant would ideally be in the hands of Wikimedia DC, I think. A little of the money could go to establishing a new domain, although that is not necessary technically to set up a wiki site
• The site will be easy to search and the data would be permanently accessible open, sharable, copyable, and reusable. However their usual objective is to get information organized for WikiData. We can do that too, but it takes a little research and thinking. My inclination is to fill out our own site to the max, then upload the core details to Wikidata after we know our stuff. I have uploaded a wee bit of patent data to Wikidata. It's doable but takes learning. Other Wikimedia DC people would be willing to help teach us and there are materials online to learn from.
• We may write an academic paper about how the wiki contributes to historical study.

Future

• Related experts on historic patents in Mexico, Uruguay, Peru, and Cuba might find this platform appealing if we can show it works nicely for the Chilean ones. These experts all know each other and Peter has met some of them. The projects are good.
• And then there are patents filed by Chileans in other countries. That might be of interest too.
• How many such Chilean patents are there? What are the fields to be incorporated? Is everything available in a spreadsheet or is there a lot of hand-transcribing to be done? Peter will be asking, after showing why this site has an appealing format.

Progress and next steps

• Started grant application: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikicite/grant/Chilean_patents_1840-1910. (A better name will be Historical Chilean patents on a wiki; what other possibilities?)

• Need to inform Wikimedia Chile: https://wikimedia.cl/la-corporacion/, https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Chile, https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikimedia_Chile

Meeting of Sept 15

Notes:

• We searched for planeador, volant(ine), cometa, aero, aire
• We found these inventors only: Maximo Bitschkus, Camilo Battifora, Julio Morande, Elionid Fragnaud & Diego A, Sutil, William Lindsay Hamilton of Scotland, Fernando Velasquez, Jarabran
• Basics of a patent useful on aero: Name of applicant, date of filing, title of the invention, any grant date, and the number of the patent granted
• To see what a spreadsheet would look like /aero/Inventing_Aviation_main_page
• 18:42 click on Underlying tables -- to see how to get the data back out to a spreadsheet without access to the CLI
• 18:46 bernardita escobar: http://imagenes.doe.cl.utalca.idm.oclc.org/diarios/1908-07-17/17000002.pdf (pw protected)
• 19:29 LTA https://www.diariooficial.interior.gob.cl/versiones-anteriores/do-h/19080717/, https://www.diariooficial.interior.gob.cl/versiones-anteriores/, https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100931472

Next meeting 5pm Sun Sept 20. peter is to have drafted the grant request. Promise an easily searched and sorted data set of these historic patents, easier to find things in than the Diario Oficial scans. The data are unusual in that we have most patent applications, as well as the granted patents, and that the evaluation is done by a chilean engineer. Give an example of a diario entry and how it would be find-able.

for grant proposal

• budget for computer support -- a .cl domain, Jitsi for communication, maybe more
• training?
• accounts with INAPI? or with libraries?
• contact wikimedia.cl. is alex stinson in contact with them anyway?