A methodology for developing new technology ideas to avoid Patent infringement: F-term based patent analysis Industrial Engineering, Ajou University, Republic

A methodology for developing new technology ideas to avoid Patent infringement: F-term based patent analysis

Industrial Engineering, Ajou University, Republic of Korea 2015. 6. 23.

Kisik Song, Sungjoo Lee*

The International conference on ICEMM 2015

1. Introduction

2. Literature review

3. Methodology

4. Case study

5. Conclusion

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Contents

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Introduction

The importance of technology opportunity analysis and new technology development has become more apparent due to the risks inherent in launching and growing new business(Lee, Kang and, Shin, 2015)

Recognizing the needs, a lot of firms have increasingly been developing new technology opportunities from patent analysis(Park et al., 2013)

In related studies, the IPC(International Patent Classification) system or keyword from text-mining application to patent documents was generally used to define vacant technologies

Unlike previous studies, this paper adopted F-term, which classifies patent documents according to the technical fea -tures of the inventions described in them

F-term provides more detailed information about technologies compared to IPC while more systematic information compared to keywords

Recognizing the potential of F-term, this paper aims to suggest a novel approach to developing new technology ideas to avoid patent infringement based on F-term

Research background



Research purpose

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Literature review(1/3)

The direction of emerging technology development based on patent information or text-mining(Park et al., 2008; Yu & Lee, 2013)

Deriving new technology opportunities based on patent-flow analysis(Lee, 2014; Yoon & Park, 2005; Kim & Song, 2007; Wang et al., 2014)

Technology forecasting by using growth rate of accumulated patent which applied s-curve(Trappey et al., 2011)

Existing studies for analyzing technology opportunity

Limitation of existing studies

First of all, since preexisting methodologies almost entirely focused on macro trends, research in micro analysis that could support enterprises in deriving technology opportunities were limited

Secondly, a lot of research still depends on qualitative analysis by an expert group

Thirdly, previous research mainly used the IPC system for analysis of technological feature or classification

However, IPC is restriced to analyzing the convergence of products and various technologies for investigating new technology



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F-term is one of the patent classification system that classifies patent documents according to the technical features of the inventions described within them

Technical features are analyzed from various perspectives such as ‘function,” “structure,” “material,” and so on

This paper used industries for “theme group,” technologies for “theme code,” technology attributes(TA ) for “view code,” and TA for “number code”

Outline of F-term



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Both F-term and IPC are patent classifications for technical taxonomy

While IPC searches using a single view, F-term can investigate in detail through multiple view

Since F-term has 5 times more classifications than IPC, the effectiveness of the technical classification is relatively high

Outline of F-term



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Methodology(1/8) Research process


Selecting target technology

Selecting technology for reference

Evaluating the ideas

Deriving new technology idea


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Methodology(2/8) Principle of methodology



Firstly, selects the target technology for a combination

Secondly, Investigates reference technology that have high potential for combination

Lastly, We compare the technologies and extract the technical features that are commonly used in other technologies and extract the technical features that are commonly used in other technologies but have not been used in the existing one

Target Technology Reference Technology

Similar technologies

applyTechnology Attribute

Deriving new technology ideas

Technology Attribute

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Methodology(3/8)

Step 1) Select the target technology for the combination

The target technology for combination will refer to the F-term classification system

F-term is collected from the Industrial Property Digital Library(IPDL)

Then, user selects technologies for combining new technology according to consideration of recent issues



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Methodology(4/8) Step 2) Selecting technology for reference



Extracting similar technologies for combination

Target technology

Attribute 1

Attribute 2

Attribute 3

Referencetechnologies

Cosine similarity

T1 T2 …

A1

A2

︙

Technology classification table

Text mining

Keyword 1Keyword 2Keyword 3︙

We measure similarity among the technologies by searching for refer-ence technologies that have a high possibility of combining with target technology

cos (𝑑𝑖 ,𝑑 𝑗)=∑𝑘=1

𝑛

𝑊 𝑖𝑘 ∙𝑊 𝑗𝑘

√∑𝑘=1

𝑛

𝑊 𝑖𝑘2 ∙∑

𝑘=1

𝑛

𝑊 𝑗𝑘2

Cosine similarity

,: Keyword vector in document i, j

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Methodology(5/8) Step 2) Selecting technology for reference



Final selecting reference technology for combination

Option 1

RankReferencetechnology

Similarityvalue

1 Technology A 0.7

2 Technology B 0.6

3 Technology C 0.5

Option 1 measures similarity among the technologies by searching for reference technologies that have a high possibility of combining with target technology

Option 2

𝑦 𝑡=𝐿

1+𝑎𝑒−𝑏𝑡

: Cumulative patent application at time T L: Maximum value of a: Location of the curve b: Controls the shape of the curve

Technology life cycle: Introduction(0.1), Early growth(0.10.3), Growth(0.30.5), Early mature(0.50.75), Mature(0.750.9), Saturation(0.9)으로 구성됨 (Mayer & Ausubel, 1999).

Patent A

Patent B

Patent C

Accumu-latedpatent value

Year

Satura-tion

Accumulatedpatent value

Accumu-latedpatent value

Growth

Mature

Year

Year

Referencetechnology A

Referencetechnology B

Referencetechnology C

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Methodology(6/8) Step 3) Deriving new technology – Process of combining technologies based on TA level



Technology A Technology BSimilar technology

Target Technology

ReferenceTechnology

TA TA TA TA TA TA

First of all, we derive new technology ideas by combining between TA in each technology in this step

The main principle of this process is to create a new technology idea by combining TA which is utilized in Refer-ence technology but not utilized in Target technology

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Methodology(7/8) Step 3) Deriving new technology – Process of combining technologies based on TA level



Secondly, Combination based on the TA level is the combination of more detailed technical units than the TA level

When both target technology and reference technology use TA but TA of TA is not being used in target technology, we can derive a new technology idea by combining TA

Technology A Technology B

TA a

Similar technology

Target Technology

Reference Technology

TA TA TA TA

TA bTA a= TA

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Methodology(8/8) Step 4) Evaluating the ideas



Applicability is assessed by how many main keywords of an idea are distributed in other technologies

Growth evaluating is performed by using the growth rate of patents containing keywords of the new technology idea in the patents’ titles

Criteria Description Modification

Technology growth

Whether the proposed technology has the potential to grow in the market

(: Accumulated patent that combined keyword in i year, i: 2004, 2005, … 2013)

Technology applicability

Whether the proposed technology is ap-plicable to many products; the more technological applications, the higher the technological connection

Note: is the relative frequency rate of keywords at each theme group t, The number of theme code combined keyword = Total number of theme code

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Case study (1/6) Step 1) Data collection and target selection



In all, a total of 49 classification documents(theme code) about automobile technology were obtained with the 2014 version of F-term

In the long term, automobile technology is expected to have great economic significance

In this case study, we selected 3D046(braking systems) for target technology

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Case study (2/6) Step 2) Selecting technology for reference



We investigated reference technologies of other 3D technologies similar to target technology 3D046(Adjustment of the braking force) for combination

If users should select option 1, we have to select 3D047, which has a high similarity to 3D046

In option 2, we can’t select final reference technology because all of the reference technologies predicted saturation

References

Target3D047 3D246 3D114 3D048 3D045

3D046 0.7217 0.7216 0.6123 0.5892 0.5773

Referencetechnologies

Cumulative number of patent applications

Range ofdecision

Technologylife cycle forecasting

3D047 695 98.85% Saturation3D246 4,271 93.77% Saturation3D114 1,079 96.16% Saturation3D048 1,465 90.08% Saturation3D045 270 96.42% Saturation

Option 1

Option 2(x)

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Case study (3/6) Step 3) Deriving new technology ideas – based on TA level



After step 2), we derived 3D047 as the TCU using option 1

We extracted the TA of 3D047 and combined target technology; 3D046 with technology for combination unit; and the TA of 3D047

The derived technology idea, as combined between technologies from the same industry, can be described by braking adjustment of force, which has a sealing function such as a diaphragm

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Case study (4/6) Step 3) Deriving new technology ideas – based on TA level



We extracted TA in TA , such as “transmission” and “control,” which are both commonly used in 3D046 and 3D047, and combined them

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Case study (5/6) Step 3) Deriving new technology ideas – Description of new ideas



New technology ideas Description

Single master-cylinder assemblies of hydraulic transmission + adjustment of the braking force Preexisting technology

Tandem master-cylinder assemblies of hydraulic transmission + adjustment of the braking force Preexisting technology

Control with constant transmission of force and pressure + adjustment of the braking force

It can be the braking force whose pressure of deliv-ery is constant by the force distribution through the transfer control unit

Control with variable transmission of force and pressure + adjustment of the braking force

It can be the braking force whose pressure of deliv-ery is variable by the force distribution through the transfer control unit

Sealing + Adjustment of braking force braking adjustment of force, which has a sealing function such as a diaphragm

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Case study (6/6) Step 4) Evaluating the ideas



For the growth assessment, we investigated patent applications from 2004 to 2013

Technology ideas were categorized into four properties according to the value of each indicator

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Conclusion

Unlike existing studies, this study investigated technical units in detail and combined them using the F-term classifi -cation system

Combining technologies within the same industry can be useful for ideas to avoid patent infringement from competi -tors

Since the rate of utilization is also increasing every year, F-term-based methodologies are expected to increase grad -ually

Contribution

Discussion

it is hard to reflect all of the technical features through the keyword level

the feasibility of verifying a new technology idea was not sufficient because we considered just two indicators for as -sessment

Further research will consider expanded keywords such as subject, verb, and adjective so that it is possible to extract technical attributes more accurately

We will need to build a model considering various indicators for feasibility evaluation



Thank youQ&A.

Documents

A methodology for developing new technology ideas to avoid Patent infringement: F-term based patent analysis Industrial Engineering, Ajou University, Republic