Download and convert bulk patent data to tidy format from the USPTO website <https://bulkdata.uspto.gov>. Data can be returned as a data frame or written to a file (see `output_file` parameter). Since USPTO issues patents weekly, at minimum, all patents from a given week must be acquired at once.
get_bulk_patent_data(year, week, output_file)
| year | integer vector containing years from which patents should be collected |
|---|---|
| week | integer vector of weeks within the corresponding `year` element from which patents should be collected |
| output_file | if `NULL`, returns a data frame; if a `character` (single-element vector), will output to that file in CSV format |
either `TRUE` (placeholder) or object of class `data.frame` (see param `output_file` for details)
## NOTE: none of the examples are run due to the download requirement if (FALSE) { # download patents from the first week of 1976 and get data frame patent_data <- get_bulk_patent_data(year = 1976, week = 1) # download patents from the last 5 weeks of 1980 (and write to a file) get_bulk_patent_data(year = rep(1980, 5), week = 48:52, output_file = "patent-data.csv") }