Trend Mining on Patent Information for Sciences

Project description

Due to the increasing competition, further aggravated by globalisation, the identification of new trends at an early stage by the research management in universities, industries and government is becoming more and more important. Hence, the objective of the Trend Mining project is to develop and test an easy to use prototype which supports scientists and information professionals in all domains of this task with a strong focus on patents.

The results of technical and natural research are often only published as patents. According to Thomson Reuters, 70% to 90% of the information contained in patents is not published anywhere else ([1]). There is also a strong increase in the number of patents filed: As of 2012, the European Patent Office reports new records for the third year in succession ([2]). This shows that patents are an important information resource for the sciences.

In this project, the required methods and techniques for trend mining in patent information are to be developed and tested. They are primarily originating from the field of text mining and need to be adapted to the patent domain and to the trend detection task. One major challenge in this adaptation process is the language used in patents, as it differs significantly from everyday language in terms of terminology as well as regards its linguistic structures. Key factors are the users and their information needs, which are examined at the beginning of the project through a qualitative survey. To ensure that the user requirements are met, users will also be involved at every stage of the development process.

The joint project of FIZ Karlsruhe and the IWIST institute of Hildesheim University is funded by the Leibniz Association.

 

_References

_{[1] The Thomson Corporation (2007): Global Patent Sources. An Overview of International Patents. 6th ed. London: Thomson Scientific. Available online at ip-science.thomsonreuters.com/m/pdfs/mgr/global_patent_sources.pdf, checked on 16/09/2013.}

_{[2] European Patent Office (2013): Annual Report 2012. Statistics and trends. Total European patent filings. Available online at www.epo.org/about-us/annual-reports-statistics/annual-report/2012/statistics-trends/patent-filings.html, updated on 6/03/2013, checked on 16/09/2013.}