Patentee Name Harmonisation - ecoom.be

Impact
From 438,069 unique names to 438,061 unique names, an additional reduction of 8 names, or a
total reduction of 5,661 names (1.3%).
1.2.4 Remove non-alphanumerical characters at the beginning of a name
Description
A name is expected to begin with a letter, a digit, or some relevant character but not with a
character such as “.” or “,”.
Non-alphanumerical characters at the beginning of a name that are not relevant should be
removed.
Analysis
Names that begin with an irrelevant non-alphanumerical character are identified by querying the
data for names where the first character does not belong to the following set of letters, digits
and other relevant characters: A-Z; 0-9; “””; “@”; “(“; “’”; “#”; “!”; “*”; “/”.
23 names were found to contain an irregular first character although only 18 actually begin with
an irrelevant character.
The following characters were identified for removal if they appear at the beginning of a name:
“.”; “-“; “?”; “:”; “_”.
Implementation
All occurrences of “.”; “-“; “?”; “!”; “*”; “:”; “_” are removed from the beginning of a name by
executing an update query on the data.
As the removal of irrelevant characters at the beginning of a name can lead to leading spaces,
names have to be checked for and trimmed of leading spaces after the removal of irrelevant
characters at the beginning of a name.
The removal of characters at the beginning of a name can also lead to a new irregular beginning
of a name, so this step has to be executed several times until no further irregularities are found.
Result
Irrelevant non-alphanumerical characters at the beginning of a name have been removed in 18
names.
Impact
From 438,061 unique names to 438,052 unique names, an additional reduction of 9 names, or a
total reduction of 5,670 names (1.3%).
1.2.5 Remove non-alphanumerical characters at the end of a name
Description
A name is expected to end with a letter, a digit or some relevant character, but not with a
character like “:” or “;”.
Non-alphanumerical characters at the end of a name that are not relevant should be removed.
Analysis
Names that end with an irrelevant non-alphanumerical character are identified by querying the
data for names where the last character does not belong to the following set of letters, digits
and other relevant characters: A-Z; 0-9; “.”; “’”; “””; “)”.
1,528 names were found containing an irregular end.
668 end with “ DITE:”, “ DITE,” or “ DITE :”. Normally, this should be followed by an acronym
or nickname. Since this is not the case here, the 668 occurrences of “DITE:”, “ DITE,” and “DITE
:” can be removed.
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