Patent data exploitation system for technology trend analysis
In the framework of the Intellectual Property Development Program in the 2016-2020 period (Program 68) managed by the National Office of Intellectual Property (Ministry of Science and Technology), PhD. Nguyen Viet Anh, Head of Data Science and Application Department, and experts in the field of data science at the Institute of Information Technology have been ordered by Program 68 to build a "Situation analysis system, tech nology development trend prediction from patent and non-patent data source ”with the aim of having an invention information analysis tool in Vietnam.
After two years of construction, Dr. Nguyen Viet Anh and his co-workers developed the first version of the patent and non-patent data exploitation system, storing nearly 5 million patent documents and nearly 100 million bibliographic data on scientific articles (non-patent document) from many sources around the world. Users can easily and quickly lookup in two ways: basic search by typing keywords or advanced search by specific fields of information such as name, author, category, certification submitted date and prioritize date.
To build the system, the team conducted research, survey and evaluation of existing data sources in the world and in Vietnam, consulted advanced patent information analysis systems of foreign countries; applied advanced techniques such as artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and big data processing to develop applications. The system has achieved the following main results and features:
Firstly, the ability to collect and process big data from various sources such as European Patent Office (EPO) patent data, Vietnamese patent data, and patent protection data in Vietnam, and world scientific papers data; supporting flexible, easy and accurate information search.
Second, the system provides diverse analysis and evaluation charts with multiple dimensions of information such as time, country, inventors, scientists, organizations and companies to help identify technology trends, outstanding inventions of high value, countries and organizations that are driving the technology trend, and leading inventors in each technology sector.
Third, the system allows searching for inventors, owners of patents related to the technology the user is interested in, in order to identify potential competitors. Information about each competitor is aggregated to form competitor profiles. This feature helps to build up an overview of R&D activities in the technology field attached with information such as number of patents of competitors, market share, and IPC (international patent classification)
Fourth, the system can quickly identify duplication of patent content, compare with competitors’ patents, identify and evaluate patent new features. This is an especially useful feature for experts of the National Office of Intellectual Property in determining whether the claim of a patent application is likely to infringe other patents.
Fifth, the system is capable of supporting the search for the world patent warehouse to introduce domestic enterprises to access to exploitation, especially technologies that have expired foreign protection period, or technology that is not registered for protection in Vietnam. This function also helps businesses avoid the risk of piracy, sometimes with fines that are many times higher than profits.
The project has successfully implemented and outperformed all the contents of the assigned task. The project's products have undergone many rounds of testing and are now ready for practical use. The system can be applied in universities, institutes, science management agencies, science and technology organizations, companies and enterprises. System users are diverse, including leaders, S&T policy makers, inventors, researchers, businesses, intellectual property experts and anyone interested in science and technology.
Overall model of the system
Several problems and system expansion scalability
Although the system is ready to use in practice, the promotion of products to reach users still faces many difficulties at present. In addition, to expand serving customers, there is also a team of engineers to operate and assist customers. This requires huge costs, exceeding the financial resources and human resources of the assistants.
With any product applying technology, in order to make the system to really work well, it is necessary to have a long enough actual testing time, helping to collect and analyze feedback and comments from users, thereby making the necessary modifications. In addition, many parts can be upgraded and supplemented so that the system can better meet the needs of technology forecast analysis.
With the main reasons mentioned above, the implementation team hopes to continue receiving support from the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Intellectual Property Development Program to continue to improve, upgrade and add new analytical features to meet the increasing demands of users and increase its competitiveness with the world's leading patent analysis products.
Translated by Tuyet Nhung
Link to Vietnamese version
