Development of a technology tree using patent information

Abstract

A technology tree is used to represent technological attributes, such as the function, purpose, and components of a technology, and has been regarded as a valuable tool for investigating a technology in detail. However, most existing approaches to developing a technology tree considerably rely on experts; thus, the evaluation is subjective and does not reflect rapidly changing technological attributes under the paradigm of convergence. This study proposes the use of patent information to develop a robust technology tree. Subsequently, technological attributes were extracted in terms of key functions, and their relationships were analyzed to form a hierarchy. For the analysis, a series of methods were employed: clustering analysis to group patents into similar content, semantic analysis to identify key technological attributes in each group, and association-rule mining to define the relationships between the technological attributes. The proposed approach was then applied to a furniture manufacturing process to validate its applicability. Providing meaningful information on the technological structure will help improve the understanding of a target technology and further support research and development planning.