Abstract
With the advent of the knowledge economy, firms often compete for intellectual property rights. Being the first to acquire high-potential patents can assist firms in achieving future competitive advantages. To identify patents capable of being developed, firms often search for a focus by using existing patent documents. Because of the rapid development of technology, the number of patent documents is immense. A prominent topic among current firms is how to use this large number of patent documents to discover new business opportunities while avoiding conflicts with existing patents. In the search for technological opportunities, a crucial task is to present results in the form of an easily understood visualization. Currently, natural language processing can help in achieving this goal. In natural language processing, word sense disambiguation (WSD) is the problem of determining which “sense” (meaning) of a word is activated in a given context. Given a word and its possible senses, as defined by a dictionary, we classify the occurrence of a word in context into one or more of its sense classes. The features of the context (such as neighboring words) provide evidence for these classifications. The current method for patent document analysis warrants improvement in areas, such as the analysis of many dimensions and the development of recommendation methods. This study proposes a visualization method that supports semantics, reduces the number of dimensions formed by terms, and can easily be understood by users. Since polysemous words occur frequently in patent documents, we also propose a WSD method to decrease the calculated degrees of distortion between terms. An analysis of outlier distributions is used to construct a patent map capable of distinguishing similar patents. During the development of new strategies, the constructed patent map can assist firms in understanding patent distributions in commercial areas, thereby preventing patent infringement caused by the development of similar technologies. Subsequently, technological opportunities can be recommended according to the patent map, aiding firms in assessing relevant patents in commercial areas early and sustainably achieving future competitive advantages.
Highlights
In many cases, firms must expend substantial amounts of time and money if they are suspected of involvement in patent infringement [1]
According to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), by searching for and reviewing patent literature, 90–95% of the world’s inventions can be understood, technology research and development (R&D) time can be decreased by 60%, and research expenditures can be decreased by 40% [5]
The data set for this study was a collection of patent documents from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) that had the strings “USB connector” or “Universal Serial Bus connector” in the title fields and had patent issue dates between 2005 and 2014
Summary
Firms must expend substantial amounts of time and money if they are suspected of involvement in patent infringement [1]. Firms often employ patent engineering teams to routinely retrieve and organize current patents relevant to the firm’s technologies [2]. This allows firms to understand which technologies are under patent protection, avoid conflicts between technologies from their research and development (R&D) and those in existing patents, and reduce the likelihood of patent infringement [2]. When firms intend to develop a new technology or product, they often first collect patents relevant to that technology Through this collection process they accumulate new technical knowledge, which inspires innovation and assists firm decision-makers in developing a strategic direction and decreasing costs during the R&D process [6]
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