Patent visualisation

Patent visualisation is an application of information visualisation. The number of patents has been increasing
steadily,[1] thus forcing companies to consider intellectual property as a part of their strategy.[2] Patent
visualisation, like patent mapping, is used to quickly view a patent portfolio.

Software dedicated to patent visualisation began to appear in 2000, for example Aureka from Aurigin (now
owned by Thomson Reuters).[3] Many patent and portfolio analytics platforms, such as Questel (https://www.q
uestel.com),[4] PatSnap, Patentcloud (https://app.patentcloud.com/), Relecura, and Patent iNSIGHT Pro,[5]
offer options to visualise specific data within patent documents by creating topic maps,[6] priority maps, IP
Landscape reports,[7] etc. Software converts patents into infographics or maps, to allow the analyst to "get
insight into the data" and draw conclusions.[8] Also called patinformatics,[9] 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.[10]

Data mining
The main step in processing structured information is data-mining,[11] which emerged in the late 1980s. Data
mining involves statistics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.[12] Patent data mining extracts
information from the structured data of the patent document.[13] These structured data are bibliographic fields
such as location, date or status.

Structured fields

Structured
Description Business Intelligence use
data

Patents contain identifying data including priority, publication

data and the issue date.

Priority data regroup priority number assigned for the first

application, the corresponding date and priority country. Crossing dates and locations
Data The publication data encompasses the publication number fields offer a global vision of a
given when the patent is published, 18 months after filling technology in time and space.
and the publication date.
The issue date is the data the patent is granted, usually
3.5 years after filling depending on the patent office.

The field can offer a ranking of the

principal actors of the
Patent assignees are organizations or individuals - the owners
Assignee environment, thus allowing us to
of the patent.
visualise potential competitors or
partners.

Inventors' field combined with the

assignee field can create a social
Inventor Inventors develop the invention/patent.
network and provide a method to
follow field experts.

The classification can regroup inventions with similar

Grouping patents by theme offers
technologies. The most commonly used is the International
an overview of the corpus and the
Classification Patent Classification (IPC). However, patent organizations
potential applications of studied
have their own classification; for instance, the European
technology.
Patent Office has framed the ECLA.
Patent family and legal status
The legal status indicates whether an application is filed, searching is very important for
Status
approved, or rejected. litigation and competitive
intelligence.

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.[14][15] This technique is widely used on the
Internet, its success in bioinformatics and now in the intellectual property environment.[16]
Text mining is based on a statistical analysis of word recurrence in a corpus.[17] An algorithm extracts words
and expressions from title, summary and claims and gathers them by declension. "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:[18][19]

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 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

Business Intelligence
Visualisation Picture Description
use

Graphic organizer used to summarize a multidimensional data

Matrix chart Picture Data comparison
set in a grid

Spatial patterns
Location map Picture Map with overlaid data values on geographic regions
Find innovative
jurisdictions

Graph with rectangular bars proportional to the values that they

Bar chart Picture Data evolution
represent, useful for numerical comparisons.

Graph used to summarize how two parameters are related and Data evolution and
Line graph Picture
how they vary. relationships
Pie chart Picture Circular chart divided into sections, to illustrate proportions. Data comparison

Market maturity
3-axis 2D chart which enables visualization similar to the Competitive
Bubble chart Picture analysis
Magic quadrant chart.
Licensing
opportunities

Text mining visualisation

Business
Visualisation Description
Intelligence use

Evaluating
relevance
Tree list Hierarchy list Taxonomy
Concept
relationships

Evaluating
Full text of concepts. The size of each word is determined by its relevance
Tag cloud
frequency in the corpus
More visual than
the tree list

Landscape
2D keyword map (htt vision of
Tomographic map with quantitative representation of relief, usually thematics
p://www.infovis.net/ima
using contour lines and colors. Distance on map is proportional to
genes/T1_N160_A853_ Similarity vision
the difference between themes.[13] with SOM
Newsmaps.jpg)[20]
Monitoring
competitors

2D hierarchical cluster map with quantitative and qualitative

representation of document set association to topic, usually using Landscape
quantized cells and colors. Size of topic cells may represent vision of
 patent count per topic relative to overall document set. Density and thematics
distribution inside of a topic cell may be proportional to document Monitoring
count relative to association to the topic and strength of competitors or a
association, respectively. technology
space
Identifying
trends in a
defined patent
set

Landscape
vision of
thematics
Text is decomposed into logical groupings and sub-groupings, then Monitoring a
represented as a navigable hierarchy of those groupings by means technology
of proportionate circle arcs. space
Interactive
navigation and
granularity

Visualisation for both data-mining and text-mining

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

Business Intelligence
Visualisation Picture Description
use

Landscape vision of
Visualization of hierarchical structures. Each data item, or hierarchical thematics
Tree map Picture row in the data set is represented by a rectangle, whose area Position of
is proportional to selected parameters. competitors or
technology by
thematics

Relationship visions
In a network diagram, entities are connected to each other in
Network map Picture Monitoring similar
the form of a node and link diagram.
competitors or
technologies

In the citation map, the date of citation is visualized on the x

axis and each individual citation takes an entry on the y Qualitative and
Citation map Picture axis. A strong vertical line indicates the filing date, showing quantitative view of
which citations are cited by the patent as opposed to those citation history and
which cite the patent. density

Uses
What can patent visualisation highlight:[21][22]

Competitors
Partners
New innovations
Technologic environment description[23]
Networks

Field application:[24][22]
 R&D strategy management
Competitive intelligence
Licensing
Strategy

References
1. [1] (http://www.wipo.int/export/sites/www/ipstats/en/statistics/patents/pdf/941e_2010.pdf)
2. Kevin G. Rivette, David Kline, "Discovering new value in intellectual property", Harvard
Business Review (January–February 2000)
3. "Thomson Reuters | Aureka | Intellectual Property" (https://archive.today/20130204105747/htt
p://thomsonreuters.com/products_services/intellectual_property/ip_products/a-z/aureka/).
Archived from the original (http://thomsonreuters.com/products_services/intellectual_property/ip
_products/a-z/aureka/) on 4 February 2013.
4. "Patent Analysis, Mapping, and Visualization Tools - PIUG Space - Global Site" (https://wiki.piu
g.org/display/PIUG/Patent+Analysis%2C+Mapping%2C+and+Visualization+Tools).
5. "Patent iNSIGHT Pro" (https://web.archive.org/web/20140221090519/http://www.intellogist.co
m/wiki/Patent_iNSIGHT_Pro). Archived from the original (http://www.intellogist.com/wiki/Patent
_iNSIGHT_Pro) on 2014-02-21. Retrieved 2014-02-07.
6. Conduct patent portfolio analysis using comparative Topic Maps (http://www.relecura.com/report
s/Relecura_Whitepaper_-_Topic_Maps.pdf)
7. Graphene Technology Insight Report (http://www.patentinsightpro.com/techreports/1113/Tech%
20Insight%20Report%20-%20Graphene.pdf)
8. Daniel A Keim et IEEE Computer Society, "Information visualization and visual data mining,"
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VISUALIZATION AND COMPUTER GRAPHICS 8 (2002): 1--8.
9. Anthony J. Trippe, "Patinformatics: Tasks to tools," World Patent Information 25, n°. 3
(September 2003): 211-221.
10. Laura Ruotsalainen, "Data mining tools for technology and competitive intelligence" VTT
Research Notes 2451(October 2008)
11. [2] (http://www.data-mining-software.com/data_mining_history.htm) Archived (https://web.archiv
e.org/web/20100612094951/http://www.data-mining-software.com/data_mining_history.htm)
June 12, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
12. "How Data Mining is Evolving" (http://www.exforsys.com/tutorials/data-mining/how-data-mining-
is-evolving.html).
13. 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.
14. [3] (http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/~msharp/text_mining.htm) Archived (https://web.archive.org/we
b/20101017010444/http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/~msharp/text_mining.htm) October 17, 2010, at
the Wayback Machine
15. Bonino, Dario; Ciaramella, Alberto; Corno, Fulvio (2010). "Review of the state-of-the-art in
patent information and forthcoming evolutions in intelligent patent informatics". World Patent
Information. 32: 30–38. doi:10.1016/j.wpi.2009.05.008 (https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.wpi.2009.0
5.008).
16. Sholom Weiss and al, Text Mining : Predictive Methods for Analyzing Unstructured Information,
1er ed. (Springer 2004).
17. Antoine Blanchard "La cartographie des brevets" La Recherche n°.398 (2006) : 82-83
18. Gerard Salton et Christopher Buckley, "Term-weighting approaches in automatic text retrieval,"
Information Processing & Management 24, n°. 5 (1988): 513-523.
19. Y Kim, J Suh, et S Park, "Visualization of patent analysis for emerging technology," Expert
Systems with Applications 34, no. 3 (4, 2008): 1804–1812.
20. "Newsmap" (https://web.archive.org/web/20100708040634/http://www.infovis.net/printMag.ph
p?num=160&lang=2). Archived from the original (http://www.infovis.net/printMag.php?num=160
&lang=2) on July 8, 2010. Retrieved April 28, 2017.
21. Miyake, M., Mune, Y. and Himeno, K. "Strategic Intellectual Property Portfolio Management:
Technology Appraisal by Using the 'Technology Heat Map'", Nomura Research Institute (NRI)
Papers, n°. 83, (December 2004).
22. Charles Boulakia "Patent mapping" (http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_developmen
t/previous_issues/articles/1190/patent_mapping) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/201103
13122156/http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_development/previous_issues/articles/
1190/patent_mapping) 2011-03-13 at the Wayback Machine
23. Richard Seymour, "Platinum Group Metals Patent Analysis and Mapping," Platinum Metals
Review 52, n°. 4 (10, 2008): 231-240.
24. 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

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