An automatic thesaurus construction method for technological terms in patent maps

A patent map, a visual representation of related patent information, is an effective strategic tool for analysis of patent application trends. In particular, an effect-technology type patent map is commonly used because patent examinations are based on technology and effect terms of the inventions. However, the patent map creation is a costly task, because most of patent maps are manually created. Therefore, we propose a method for automatic patent map construction. As a first step to develop such a method, we focused on technological terms that represent technologies for realizing the effect. In this step, we develop our method for clustering technological terms, because we need to use clusters of technological terms for our patent maps. The automatic technological terms clustering requires determining the relationship between technological terms. We developed a method to find relationship between technological terms by using a similarity between morphemes of these words as well as existing thesaurus knowledge.