The patent domain is a very important source of scientific information that is currently not used to its full potential. Searching for relevant patents is a complex task because the number of existing patents is very high and grows quickly, patent text is extremely complicated, and standard vocabulary is not used consistently or doesn’t even exist. As a consequence, pure keyword searches often fail to return satisfying results in the patent domain. Major companies employ patent professionals who are able to search patents effectively, but even they have to invest a lot of time and effort into their search. Academic scientists on the other hand do not have access to such resources and therefore often do not search patents at all, but they risk missing up-to-date information that will not be published in scientific publications until much later, if it is published at all. Document search on PubMed, the pre-eminent database for biomedical literature, relies on the annotation of its documents with relevant terms from the Medical Subject Headings ontology (MeSH) for improving recall through query expansion. Similarly, professional patent searches expand beyond keywords by including class codes from various patent classification systems. However, classification-based searches can only be performed effectively if the user has very detailed knowledge of the system, which is usually not the case for academic scientists. Consequently, we investigated methods to automatically identify relevant classes that can then be suggested to the user to expand their query. Since every patent is assigned at least one class code, it should be possible for these assignments to be used in a similar way as the MeSH annotations in PubMed. In order to develop a system for this task, it is necessary to have a good understanding of the properties of both classification systems. In order to gain such knowledge, we perform an in-depth comparative analysis of MeSH and the main patent classification system, the International Patent Classification (IPC). We investigate the hierarchical structures as well as the properties of the terms/classes respectively, and we compare the assignment of IPC codes to patents with the annotation of PubMed documents with MeSH terms. Our analysis shows that the hierarchies are structurally similar, but terms and annotations differ significantly. The most important differences concern the considerably higher complexity of the IPC class definitions compared to MeSH terms and the far lower number of class assignments to the average patent compared to the number of MeSH terms assigned to PubMed documents. As a result of these differences, problems are caused both for unexperienced patent searchers and professionals. On the one hand, the complex term system makes it very difficult for members of the former group to find any IPC classes that are relevant for their search task. On the other hand, the low number of IPC classes per patent points to incomplete class assignments by the patent office, therefore limiting the recall of the classification-based searches that are frequently performed by the latter group. We approach these problems from two directions: First, by automatically assigning additional patent classes to make up for the missing assignments, and second, by automatically retrieving relevant keywords and classes that are proposed to the user so they can expand their initial search. For the automated assignment of additional patent classes, we adapt an approach to the patent domain that was successfully used for the assignment of MeSH terms to PubMed abstracts. Each document is assigned a set of IPC classes by a large set of binary Maximum-Entropy classifiers. Our evaluation shows good performance by individual classifiers (precision/recall between 0:84 and 0:90), making the retrieval of additional relevant documents for specific IPC classes feasible. The assignment of additional classes to specific documents is more problematic, since the precision of our classifiers is not high enough to avoid false positives. However, we propose filtering methods that can help solve this problem. For the guided patent search, we demonstrate various methods to expand a user’s initial query. Our methods use both keywords and class codes that the user enters to retrieve additional relevant keywords and classes that are then suggested to the user. These additional query components are extracted from different sources such as patent text, IPC definitions, external vocabularies and co-occurrence data. The suggested expansions can help unexperienced users refine their queries with relevant IPC classes, and professionals can compose their complete query faster and more easily. We also present GoPatents, a patent retrieval prototype that incorporates some of our proposals and makes faceted browsing of a patent corpus possible.

The patent domain is a very important source of scientific information that is currently not used to its full potential. Searching for relevant patents is a complex task because the number of existing patents is very high and grows quickly, patent text is extremely complicated, and standard vocabulary is not used consistently or doesn’t even exist. As a consequence, pure keyword searches often fail to return satisfying results in the patent domain. Major companies employ patent professionals who are able to search patents effectively, but even they have to invest a lot of time and effort into their search. Academic scientists on the other hand do not have access to such resources and therefore often do not search patents at all, but they risk missing up-to-date information that will not be published in scientific publications until much later, if it is published at all. Document search on PubMed, the pre-eminent database for biomedical literature, relies on the annotation of its documents with relevant terms from the Medical Subject Headings ontology (MeSH) for improving recall through query expansion. Similarly, professional patent searches expand beyond keywords by including class codes from various patent classification systems. However, classification-based searches can only be performed effectively if the user has very detailed knowledge of the system, which is usually not the case for academic scientists. Consequently, we investigated methods to automatically identify relevant classes that can then be suggested to the user to expand their query. Since every patent is assigned at least one class code, it should be possible for these assignments to be used in a similar way as the MeSH annotations in PubMed. In order to develop a system for this task, it is necessary to have a good understanding of the properties of both classification systems. In order to gain such knowledge, we perform an in-depth comparative analysis of MeSH and the main patent classification system, the International Patent Classification (IPC). We investigate the hierarchical structures as well as the properties of the terms/classes respectively, and we compare the assignment of IPC codes to patents with the annotation of PubMed documents with MeSH terms. Our analysis shows that the hierarchies are structurally similar, but terms and annotations differ significantly. The most important differences concern the considerably higher complexity of the IPC class definitions compared to MeSH terms and the far lower number of class assignments to the average patent compared to the number of MeSH terms assigned to PubMed documents. As a result of these differences, problems are caused both for unexperienced patent searchers and professionals. On the one hand, the complex term system makes it very difficult for members of the former group to find any IPC classes that are relevant for their search task. On the other hand, the low number of IPC classes per patent points to incomplete class assignments by the patent office, therefore limiting the recall of the classification-based searches that are frequently performed by the latter group. We approach these problems from two directions: First, by automatically assigning additional patent classes to make up for the missing assignments, and second, by automatically retrieving relevant keywords and classes that are proposed to the user so they can expand their initial search. For the automated assignment of additional patent classes, we adapt an approach to the patent domain that was successfully used for the assignment of MeSH terms to PubMed abstracts. Each document is assigned a set of IPC classes by a large set of binary Maximum-Entropy classifiers. Our evaluation shows good performance by individual classifiers (precision/recall between 0:84 and 0:90), making the retrieval of additional relevant documents for specific IPC classes feasible. The assignment of additional classes to specific documents is more problematic, since the precision of our classifiers is not high enough to avoid false positives. However, we propose filtering methods that can help solve this problem. For the guided patent search, we demonstrate various methods to expand a user’s initial query. Our methods use both keywords and class codes that the user enters to retrieve additional relevant keywords and classes that are then suggested to the user. These additional query components are extracted from different sources such as patent text, IPC definitions, external vocabularies and co-occurrence data. The suggested expansions can help unexperienced users refine their queries with relevant IPC classes, and professionals can compose their complete query faster and more easily. We also present GoPatents, a patent retrieval prototype that incorporates some of our proposals and makes faceted browsing of a patent corpus possible.

Text classification is used in information extraction and retrieval from a given text, and text classification has been considered as an important step to manage a vast number of records given in digital form that is far-reaching and expanding. This thesis addresses patent document classification problem into fifteen different categories or classes, where some classes overlap with other classes for practical reasons. For the development of the classification model using machine learning techniques, useful features have been extracted from the given documents. The features are used to classify patent document as well as to generate useful tag-words. The overall objective of this work is to systematize NASA’s patent management, by developing a set of automated tools that can assist NASA to manage and market its portfolio of intellectual properties (IP), and to enable easier discovery of relevant IP by users. We have identified an array of methods that can be applied such as k-Nearest Neighbors (kNN), two variations of the Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithms, and two tree based classification algorithms: Random Forest and J48. The major research steps in this work consist of filtering techniques for variable selection, information gain and feature correlation analysis, and training and testing potential models using effective classifiers. Further, the obstacles associated with the imbalanced data were mitigated by adding synthetic data wherever appropriate, which resulted in a superior SVM classifier based model.

Patents have a great research value and it is also beneficial to the community of industrial, commercial, legal and policymaking. Effective analysis of patent literature can reveal important technical details and relationships, and it can also explain business trends, propose novel industrial solutions, and make crucial investment decisions. Therefore, we should carefully analyze patent documents and use the value of patents. Generally, patent analysts need to have a certain degree of expertise in various research fields, including information retrieval, data processing, text mining, field-specific technology, and business intelligence. In real life, it is difficult to find and nurture such an analyst in a relatively short period of time, enabling him or her to meet the requirement of multiple disciplines. Patent classification is also crucial in processing patent applications because it will empower people with the ability to manage and maintain patent texts better and more flexible. In recent years, the number of patents worldwide has increased dramatically, which makes it very important to design an automatic patent classification system. This system can replace the time-consuming manual classification, thus providing patent analysis managers with an effective method of managing patent texts. This paper designs a patent classification system based on data mining methods and machine learning techniques and use KNIME software to conduct a comparative analysis. This paper will research by using different machine learning methods and different parts of a patent. The purpose of this thesis is to use text data processing methods and machine learning techniques to classify patents automatically. It mainly includes two parts, the first is data preprocessing and the second is the application of machine learning techniques. The research questions include: Which part of a patent as input data performs best in relation to automatic classification? And which of the implemented machine learning algorithms performs best regarding the classification of IPC keywords? This thesis will use design science research as a method to research and analyze this topic. It will use the KNIME platform to apply the machine learning techniques, which include decision tree, XGBoost linear, XGBoost tree, SVM, and random forest. The implementation part includes collection data, preprocessing data, feature word extraction, and applying classification techniques. The patent document consists of many parts such as description, abstract, and claims. In this thesis, we will feed separately these three group input data to our models. Then, we will compare the performance of those three different parts. Based on the results obtained from these three experiments and making the comparison, we suggest using the description part data in the classification system because it shows the best performance in English patent text classification. The abstract can be as the auxiliary standard for classification. However, the classification based on the claims part proposed by some scholars has not achieved good performance in our research. Besides, the BoW and TFIDF methods can be used together to extract efficiently the features words in our research. In addition, we found that the SVM and XGBoost techniques have better performance in the automatic patent classification system in our research.

Patent monitoring is about tracking the upcoming inventions in a particular field, predicting future trends, and specific intellectual property rights of interest. It is the process of finding relevant patents on a particular topic based on a specific query. With patent monitoring, one can keep them updated on the new technology in the market. Also, they can find potential licensing opportunities for their inventions. The outputs of patent monitoring are essential for companies, academics, and inventors looking forward to using the latest patents that can enhance further innovation. Nevertheless, there is no widely accepted best approach to patent monitoring. Usually, most patent monitoring systems are based on complex search and find, often leading to insignificant hit rates and highly human intervention. As the number of patents published each year increases massively and with patents being critical to accelerating innovation, the current approach to patent monitoring has two main drawbacks. Firstly, human-driven patent monitoring is time consuming and expensive process. In addition, there is a risk of overlooking interesting documents due to inadequate searching tools and processes, which could cost companies fortunes while at the same time hindering further innovation and creativity. This thesis presents a smart patent monitoring assistant tool that applies natural language processing. The use of several natural language processing methods is investigated to find, classify and rank relevant documents. The tool was trained on a dataset that contains the title, abstract, and claims of patent documents. Given a dataset of patent documents, the aim of this thesis is to create a tool that can classify patents into two classes relevant and not relevant. Furthermore, the tool can rank documents based on relevancy. The evaluation result of the tool gave satisfying results when it came to receiving the expected patents. In addition, there is a significant improvement in terms of performance for memory usage and the time it took to train the model and get results. / Patentövervakning handlar om att övervaka kommande uppfinningar, förutsäga framtida trender, eller specifika immateriella rättigheter och används för att hitta relevanta patent inom ett visst område. Med patentövervakning är det möjligt att hålla patent uppdaterade enligt den senaste tekniken på marknaden samt att hitta potentiella möjligheter att licensiera innehavda patent till tredje part. Målgruppen för patentövervakning är företag, akademiker, och uppfinnare som vill hitta de senaste patenten för att uppnå maximal innovation. Dock finns det ingen generell metod för att bedriva patentövervakning. Vanligtvis används komplexa sökmetoder som resulterar i undermåliga resultat och kräver manuellt ingripande. I och med att andelen patent ökar varje år har nuvarande metod två huvudsakliga nackdelar. Till att börja med är mänsklig patentövervakning en tidskrävande och dyr process. Vidare är det en betydande risk att missa viktiga eller på andra sätt intressanta dokument till följd av en bristande sökprocess. Detta kan möjligtvis resultera i att företag missar stora möjligheter samt utebliven innovation och kreativitet. Detta arbete presenterar ett smart verktyg för patentövervakning baserat på natural language processing. Vi analyserar användningen av ett flertal processer för att hitta, klassificera, och rangordna relevant dokument. Verktyget tränades på ett dataset som innehåller patentets titel, abstrakt, och vad patentet gör anspråk på. Givet ett godtyckligt dataset är målet med detta arbete att utveckla ett verktyg med förmågan att klassificera relevanta och icke-relevanta patent samt rangordna dessa utifrån relevans. Resultatet visar att verktyget gav tillfredsställande gällande att hitta önskvärda patent. Vidare uppnåddes en signifikant förbättring när det gäller prestanda för minnesanvändning och tiden som krävs för att träna modeller och erhålla resultat.