Null Assignees
This page is sending in a get request to patentsview's inventors endpoint
asking for details on the top three inventors at a specific location:
q={"_and":[{"location_city":"Las Vegas"}, {"location_state":"NV"}, {"location_country":"US"}]}
&f=["inventor_total_num_patents", "inventor_first_name", "inventor_last_name", "patent_number", "assignee_id", "assignee_first_name", "assignee_last_name", "assignee_total_num_patents", "assignee_organization", "assignee_num_patents_for_inventor"
]
&s= [{"inventor_total_num_patents":"desc"}]
&o={"per_page":3}
Ok, so initially this was a mistake. In an accidental copy and paste,
I sent assignee fields to the inventors endpoint. I question whether
the 3 null assignees are valid (or useful really!).
{
"assignee_id": null,
"assignee_first_name": null,
"assignee_last_name": null,
"assignee_total_num_patents": null,
"assignee_organization": null,
"assignee_num_patents_for_inventor": null
}
I'm guessing these "assignee_id": null blocks in the
assignee array represent the inventor's
patents that aren't assigned. They're providing consistency for the
"patent_firstnamed_assignee_id": null. I'd rather not see the "patent_firstnamed_assignee_id" attribute when the patent is not assigned
and not get a block where every attribute is null. I'd prefer
to present the returned data to a user directly without having to
filter it. An assignee_id of null would probably be confusing to most viewers.
The size of the assignee array is also misleading to me. It's one
higher than I would like! If the web service is going to return
a block where the "assignee_id" is null shouldn't the "assignee_total_num_patents" and "assignee_num_patents_for_inventor" be something other than null? The former
would be
an interesting number! (Knowing overall how many patents are not assigned. I could determine the latter if I wanted to)
On this page alone assignee_total_num_patents should be 8 (to match the number of
"patent_firstnamed_assignee_id": null currently being displayed).