The Sqoop Blog
Most Inventive Companies of 2019 Based on Patent Activity
Sqoop has been collecting U.S. patent data for journalists and other information professionals since 2014, and twice before we’ve published annual rankings of the companies that have applied for or have been granted utility patents and also companies that have received design patents. read more
New Federal Agency Releases: Department of Justice
Thanks to all who participated in June’s Sqoop user survey. As a result of your answers, we prioritized adding U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) publications. This includes: read more
New Query Language and Features
We’re excited to announce the release of a significant new set of search features allowing you to find more documents of interest and to filter out documents not of interest. Previously we treated any input text query as just a series of terms (punctuation ignored, etc.) and matched any document that containing all of those terms. Now we support... read more
Most Inventive Companies of 2016 Based on Patent Activity
For the past couple of years we’ve been collecting and indexing US patent data to be used by journalists, business intelligence, financial services and other information professionals. We published our first annual list last year, and below is our second annual ranking of the top 40 companies granted the most utility (invention) patents in 2016,... read more
Testing New Sqoop Channel for Business News
Today Sqoop gives journalists information about businesses from SEC filings, patent applications and grants, and federal court records. Knowing that there are certain companies and sectors you’re interested in hearing from, today we’ll begin testing a new source of news tips: the businesses themselves. read more
Searching in Metropolitan Areas
Its not unusual for corporations in the United States to be physically located well outside the limits of any city they may be best associated with. Consider tech parks and rural campuses. Individual zip codes, cities, counties or even state borders may be insufficient to represent a reporter’s geographic interests. It was with this in mind that... read more
Announcing Geographic Search with Location Filters
Today we are pleased to release geographic search features in the form of location filters. We’ve received quite a few requests for these features, in particular from reporters who’s beats cover particular geographic areas like Pennsylvania or Silicon Valley. A location filter consists of one of the following kinds of criteria: read more
Follow Specific Federal Courts
Many of you have asked us for ways to conduct geographic-specific searches generally, and some of you have even expressed a desire to track new cases from a particular federal court specifically. We are actively working on general geographic search with an initial emphasis on SEC company filings. We will consider also adding the capability of... read more
Five tips every business journalist should know about mining news from the SEC
Disclosures with the Securities and Exchange Commission are a treasure trove of potential news stories, but you have to know where to look. The SEC’s online database, EDGAR, has a well-known company search section, but there are other, over-looked areas that warrant some attention. Further, there are sections of common SEC records that you... read more
2015 List of Insiders Who Sold the Most Stock
Over the past year, we’ve tracked the amount of money company insiders have made from stock sales as disclosed to the Securities and Exchange Commission using the Form 4. Following is our ranking for the top sellers, compiled by totaling the top 200 insider sales for the year, and then separating out institutional investors, leaving only people... read more
Refine Your Searches and Alerts with New Sqoop Filters
Today we’re releasing a new set of features intended to help you find what you’re looking for faster, and more narrowly refine the alerts you receive from Sqoop. We think this could save you time and also help you uncover news more easily. read more
Most Inventive Companies of 2015 Based on Patent Activity
Update 2017-1-10: As part of our 2016 reporting effort, several methodology improvements allow us to retroactively improve the accuracy of these 2015 company lists, which are updated below. Also the revised counts include the full year 2015 results. read more
Introducing Advertising on Sqoop
This week, we will test a form of advertising and sponsorship on Sqoop. Most of you are veteran business journalists who understand that no company can live indefinitely without revenue. read more
Hiding in plain sight: the problem with federal court data
Last week a federal judge in Northern California ruled that four major technology companies would pay more than 64,000 current and former employees $415 million dollars . Who are these tech giants, you ask? You’d never know from the limited amount of data the federal court system provides free of charge: read more
Link to Enhanced SEC Detail Pages
We’ve just released a major enhancement to SEC detail pages that benefits you as journalists and potentially your readership as well. read more
Company Insiders Who've Sold the Most Stock this Year
When you think of people making the most money on the sale of their company’s stock, you might expect to see the likes of Bill Gates and Larry Page, but in reality the vast majority of insiders who have sold stock so far this year work for investment firms with major stakes in those companies. read more
Receive Alerts for Federal Court Case Updates with Docket Watch
Since adding federal court data in March, we’ve collected information on 1.75M federal court cases containing 13.7M docket entries which are the line items showing progress of the case with attached documents. We made federal court dockets user visible in April. Users have saved hundreds of searches that include federal courts and we’ve notified... read more
Companies whose Insiders Sold the Most Stock this Year
While entertainment and technology seem to dominate business headlines, the executives and major investors cashing in big bucks come from decidedly less sexy enterprises like Brixmor , the commercial real estate investor whose insiders sold more than $6.6 billion, and Aramark , the foodservice, facilities, and clothing supplier, with nearly $4.8... read more
Breaking Down Breaking News: An Anatomy of Twitter’s Costolo News
Amid the flurry of news and analysis very shortly following Twitter’s announcement that its CEO Dick Costolo would be replaced in his post by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, we chronicled how the news was disclosed by the company and how that informed early coverage of the announcement. One thing is clear: in order to lead the pack in a breaking... read more
Top 40 Most Inventive Companies Based on Patent Activity this Year
We see the same companies apply for and receive dozens of patents each week in some cases, so we decided to publish a list of those companies who are most inventive. Following are lists of companies that have received grants and applied for utility patents, i.e., patents for invention, from the United States Patent Office, through the end of May. read more
New Company Filters, Simplified Alert Settings
Full-text search often does a good job finding references buried deep in complex documents like SEC filings. A search for Microsoft for example, includes SEC filings made by Barnes & Noble as well as Yahoo. These cross-company references are often interesting, as a Geekwire article Microsoft and Yahoo add new escape clause to search... read more
Sqoop adds federal courts, detail pages, and other improvements
Over the past few months, we’ve seen how reporters from nationally recognized media have used Sqoop to break stories on everything from Apple working on an iPad cover that wirelessly charges the device, to Virgin America insiders “dumping” their stock to a trilogy of stories from a number of media outlets involving changes in the CFO’s office at... read more
Introducing Sqoop
Changes to the news media industry over the past decade and a half have been well documented: there are now fewer reporters being asked to develop more original content. Although there has been a resurgence in media over the past two years with more than $850 million invested in both online and traditional outlets, the pressure for more content... read more