Patent visualisation is an application of

information visualisation Data and information visualization (data viz or info viz) is an interdisciplinary field that deals with the graphic representation of data and information. It is a particularly efficient way of communicating when the data or information is num ...

. The number of

patents A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A p ...

has been increasing steadily, thus forcing companies to consider

intellectual property Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, cop ...

as a part of their strategy. Patent visualisation, like

patent map A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...

ping, is used to quickly view a

patent portfolio A patent portfolio is a collection of patents owned by a single entity, such as an individual or corporation. The patents may be related or unrelated. Patent applications may also be regarded as included in a patent portfolio. The monetary benefit ...

. Software dedicated to patent visualisation began to appear in 2000, for example Aureka from Aurigin (now owned by

Thomson Reuters Thomson Reuters Corporation ( ) is a Canadian multinational media conglomerate. The company was founded in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where it is headquartered at the Bay Adelaide Centre. Thomson Reuters was created by the Thomson Corpora ...

). Many patent and portfolio analytics platforms, such a
Questel
PatSnap
Patentcloud
Relecura, and Patent iNSIGHT Pro, offer options to visualise specific data within patent documents by creating

topic map A topic map is a standard for the representation and interchange of knowledge, with an emphasis on the findability of information. Topic maps were originally developed in the late 1990s as a way to represent back-of-the-book index structures s ...

s, priority maps, IP Landscape reports, etc. Software converts

into

infographics Infographics (a clipped compound of "information" and "graphics") are graphic visual representations of information, data, or knowledge intended to present information quickly and clearly.Doug Newsom and Jim Haynes (2004). ''Public Relations Wri ...

or maps, to allow the analyst to "get insight into the data" and draw conclusions. Also called patinformatics, it is the "science of analysing patent information to discover relationships and trends that would be difficult to see when working with patent documents on a one-and-one basis". Patents contain structured data (like publication numbers) and unstructured text (like title, abstract, claims and visual info). Structured data are processed by data-mining and unstructured data are processed with

text-mining Text mining, also referred to as ''text data mining'', similar to text analytics, is the process of deriving high-quality information from text. It involves "the discovery by computer of new, previously unknown information, by automatically extract ...

Data mining

The main step in processing structured information is data-mining, which emerged in the late 1980s. Data mining involves statistics,

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

, and

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

. Patent data mining extracts information from the structured data of the patent document.Sungjoo Lee, Byungun Yoon, et Yongtae Park, "An approach to discovering new technology opportunities: Keyword-based patent map approach," Technovation 29, n°. 6 (Juin): 481-497. These structured data are bibliographic fields such as location, date or status.

Structured fields

Advantages

Data mining allows study of filing patterns of competitors and locates main patent filers within a specific area of technology. This approach can be helpful to monitor competitors' environments, moves and innovation trends and gives a macro view of a technology status.

Text-mining

Principle

Text mining is used to search through unstructured text documents. This technique is widely used on the Internet, its success in

bioinformatics Bioinformatics () is an interdisciplinary field that develops methods and software tools for understanding biological data, in particular when the data sets are large and complex. As an interdisciplinary field of science, bioinformatics combi ...

and now in the intellectual property environment. Text mining is based on a statistical analysis of word recurrence in a corpus. An algorithm extracts words and expressions from title, summary and claims and gathers them by

declension In linguistics, declension (verb: ''to decline'') is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence, by way of some inflection. Declensions may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and ar ...

. "And" and "if" are labeled as non-information bearing words and are stored in the stopword list. Stoplists can be specialized in order to create an accurate analysis. Next, the algorithm ranks the words by weight, according to their frequency in the patent's corpus and the document frequency containing this word. The score for each word is calculated using a formula such as:

Weight=\frac=\frac

A frequently-used word in several documents has less weight than a word used frequently in a few patents. Words under a minimum weight are eliminated, leaving a list of pertinent words or descriptors. Each patent is associated to the descriptors found in the selected document. Further, in the process of clusterization, these descriptors are used as subsets, in which the patent are regrouped or as tags to place the patents in predetermined categories, for example keywords from International Patent Classifications. Four text parts can be processed with text-mining : *Title *Abstract *Claim *Patent Full-Text Software offer different combinations but title, abstract and claim are generally the most used, providing a good balance between interferences and relevancy.

Advantages

Text-mining can be used to narrow a search or quickly evaluate a patent corpus. For instance, if a query produces irrelevant documents, a multi-level clustering hierarchy identifies them in order to delete them and refine the search. Text-mining can also be used to create internal taxonomies specific to a corpus for possible mapping.

Visualisations

Allying

patent analysis Patent analysis is the process of analyzing patent documents and other information from the patent lifecycle. Patent analysis is used to obtain deeper insights into different technologies and innovation. Other terms are sometimes used as synonyms ...

and informatic tools offers an overview of the environment through value-added visualisations. As patents contain structured and unstructured information, visualisations fall in two categories. Structured data can be rendered with data mining in macrothematic maps and statistical analysis. Unstructured information can be shown in like clouds, cluster maps and 2D keyword maps.

Data mining visualisation

Text mining visualisation

Visualisation for both data-mining and text-mining

Mapping visualisations can be used for both text-mining and data-mining results.

Uses

What can patent visualisation highlight:Charles Boulaki
"Patent mapping"
* Competitors * Partners * New innovations * Technologic environment description *

Networks Network, networking and networked may refer to: Science and technology * Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects * Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks Mathematics ...

Field application:Susan E Cullen, "Introduction, From acorns to oak trees : how patent audits help innovations reach their full potential" IP Value 2010 - An International Guide for the Boardroom : 26--30 * R&D strategy management *

Competitive intelligence Competitive intelligence (CI) is the process and forward-looking practices used in producing knowledge about the competitive environment to improve organizational performance. It involves the systematic collection and analysis of information from ...

Licensing A license (or licence) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit). A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another party (licensee) as an element of an agreeme ...

* Strategy

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Patent Visualisation Computer graphics Infographics Patent law Visualization (graphics)