Patent analysis methodology. Aenert

Search, systematization and analysis of patent solutions are imperative constituents of successful development for any kind of business that relies on advanced technological achievements. Avalanche-like growth in the number of patent documents in the last two decades, expansion of their geographical diversity and the ever-growing mutual penetration of various technical disciplines during the development of new inventions cause substantial difficulties for proper and timely acquisition of essential patent information.

Remarkable progress in the provision of efficient access to patenting information is a corresponding reaction to this process and is achieved by the improvements in patent search systems, mutual cooperation of patent offices in different countries and the employment of modern software solutions. Nowadays, excellent facilities to search for necessary patent documents and their preliminary analytical processing can be found not only in commercial patent search systems, but also in generally available systems that aggregate patent documents from various national patent offices, for instance, Espacenet, Lens, Patentsope, Google Patent, etc.

Nevertheless, despite the aforementioned achievements, interested consumers, such as manufacturers, developers, engineers or researchers, can often be puzzled by the abundance of and continuous growth in the number of patent documents. The diversity of terminology used to specify one and the same technology element or problem; semantic ambiguity of the phraseology used; key words used in cases that don’t correspond to the expected subject – all this considerably complicates and harms the process of invention search and interpretation of their technical solutions.

The present methodology represents an attempt to partially resolve these problems in connection with some of the advanced energy technologies.

1. Introduction

2. Patent document search and formation of source subject based lists

3. Patent document processing methodology

4. Rating evaluation of patent documents
4.1. Patent document kind.
4.2. The patent document’s association with the list of most important countries for the respective industry sector.
4.3. Number of offices covered by invention.
4.4. Number of IPC sections assigned to a patent document.
4.5. Number of claims in a patent document.
4.6. Number of problems the invention aims to solve.
4.7. Occurrence of the problems considered as important for the industry in the invention
4.8. Types of technical solutions encountered in the invention
4.9. Patent pending time.
4.10. The invention’s association with important technology elements.
4.11. Level of international cooperation in document.
4.12. Applicant’s level of patenting activity.
4.13. Inventor’s level of patenting activity.
4.14. Number of times the document is cited by other patent documents.
4.15. Applicant’s activity in the field of non-patent publications.
4.16. Continuous regular activity of applicant.
4.17. Correlation of applicant’s patents and applications.
4.18. Non-resident activity of applicant.
4.19. Applicant’s share in the intellectual property market
4.20. Degree of diversity in the patent documents of applicant.

5. Evaluation of patenting activity state

6. Patent analysis implementation
6.1. The general pattern of patent document processing and their detailed analysis includes:
6.2. Industry objects
6.3. The main elements of the analysis of patent documents
6.4. Major elements of graphical visualization of statistical data
6.5. Patent data bases and patent document lists
6.6. Detailed analysis of patent documents
6.7. Explanatory remarks

7. Annex