1. A methodology for developing new technology ideas to avoid
Patent infringement: F-term based patent analysis
The International conference on ICEMM 2015
Kisik Song, Sungjoo Lee*
Industrial Engineering, Ajou University, Republic of Korea

2. Contents Introduction Literature review Methodology Case study
Conclusion
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3. Kisik Song, Sungjoo Lee*
The International conference on ICEMM 2015
Introduction
Research background
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
Research purpose
Unlike previous studies, this paper adopted F-term, which classifies patent documents according to the technical features 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
Kisik Song, Sungjoo Lee*
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4. Kisik Song, Sungjoo Lee*
The International conference on ICEMM 2015
Literature review(1/3)
Existing studies for analyzing technology opportunity
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)
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
Kisik Song, Sungjoo Lee*
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5. Kisik Song, Sungjoo Lee*
The International conference on ICEMM 2015
Literature review(2/3)
Outline of F-term
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 𝑖) for “view code,” and TA 𝑖 (𝑗) for “number code”
Kisik Song, Sungjoo Lee*
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6. Kisik Song, Sungjoo Lee*
The International conference on ICEMM 2015
Literature review(3/3)
Outline of F-term
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
Kisik Song, Sungjoo Lee*
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7. Methodology(1/8) Research process Selecting target technology
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Methodology(1/8)
Research process
Selecting target technology
Selecting technology for reference
Deriving new technology idea
Evaluating the ideas
Kisik Song, Sungjoo Lee*
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8. Deriving new technology ideas
The International conference on ICEMM 2015
Methodology(2/8)
Principle of methodology
Target Technology
Reference Technology
Technology
Attribute
apply
Technology
Attribute
Similar technologies
Deriving new technology ideas
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
Kisik Song, Sungjoo Lee*
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9. Kisik Song, Sungjoo Lee*
The International conference on ICEMM 2015
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
Kisik Song, Sungjoo Lee*
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10. Technology classification table
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Methodology(4/8)
Step 2) Selecting technology for reference
Extracting similar technologies for combination
Technology classification table T1 T2 … A1 A2 ︙
Keyword 1
Keyword 2
Keyword 3 ︙
Text mining
We measure similarity among the technologies by searching for reference technologies that have a high possibility of combining with target technology
Target technology
Attribute 1
Attribute 2
Attribute 3
Reference
technologies
Cosine similarity
cos ( 𝑑 𝑖 , 𝑑 𝑗 ) = 𝑘=1 𝑛 𝑊 𝑖𝑘 ∙ 𝑊 𝑗𝑘 𝑘=1 𝑛 𝑊 𝑖𝑘 2 ∙ 𝑘=1 𝑛 𝑊 𝑗𝑘 2
𝑊 𝑖 , 𝑊 𝑗 : Keyword vector in document i, j
Cosine similarity
Kisik Song, Sungjoo Lee*
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11. Kisik Song, Sungjoo Lee*
The International conference on ICEMM 2015
Methodology(5/8)
Step 2) Selecting technology for reference
Final selecting reference technology for combination
Option 1
Option 2
𝑦 𝑡 : Cumulative patent application at time T
L: Maximum value of 𝑦 𝑡
a: Location of the curve
b: Controls the shape of the curve
𝑦 𝑡 = 𝐿 1+𝑎 𝑒 −𝑏𝑡
Rank
Reference
technology
Similarity
value 1
Technology A
0.7 2
Technology B
0.6 3
Technology C
0.5
Technology life cycle: Introduction( 𝐿 𝑦 𝑡 <0.1), Early growth(0.1≤ 𝐿 𝑦 𝑡 <0.3), Growth(0.3≤ 𝐿 𝑦 𝑡 <0.5), Early mature(0.5≤ 𝐿 𝑦 𝑡 <0.75), Mature(0.75≤ 𝐿 𝑦 𝑡 <0.9), Saturation(0.9≤ 𝐿 𝑦 𝑡 )으로 구성됨(Mayer & Ausubel, 1999).
Accumulated
patent value
Option 1 measures similarity among the technologies by searching for reference technologies that have a high possibility of combining with target technology
Reference
technology A
Patent A
Saturation
Year
Accumulated
patent value
Reference
technology B
Patent B
Growth
Year
Accumulated
patent value
Reference
technology C
Mature
Patent C
Year
Kisik Song, Sungjoo Lee*
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12. Kisik Song, Sungjoo Lee*
The International conference on ICEMM 2015
Methodology(6/8)
Step 3) Deriving new technology – Process of combining technologies based on TA 𝑖 level
Target
Technology
Reference
Technology
Similar technology
Technology A
Technology B
TA 𝑎1
TA 𝑎2
TA 𝑏1
TA 𝑏1
TA 𝑏2
TA 𝑏3
First of all, we derive new technology ideas by combining between TA 𝑖 in each technology in this step
The main principle of this process is to create a new technology idea by combining TA 𝑖, which is utilized in Reference technology but not utilized in Target technology
Kisik Song, Sungjoo Lee*
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13. Kisik Song, Sungjoo Lee*
The International conference on ICEMM 2015
Methodology(7/8)
Step 3) Deriving new technology – Process of combining technologies based on TA 𝑖 (𝑗) level
Target
Technology
Reference
Technology
Similar technology
Technology A
Technology B
TA a 1 = TA 𝑏1
TA a 1
TA b 1
TA 𝑎1 (1)
TA 𝑏1 (1)
TA 𝑏1 (1)
TA 𝑏2 (2)
Secondly, Combination based on the TA 𝑖 (𝑗) level is the combination of more detailed technical units than the TA 𝑖 level
When both target technology and reference technology use TA 𝑖 but TA 𝑖 (𝑗) of TA 𝑖 is not being used in target technology, we can derive a new technology idea by combining TA 𝑖 (𝑗)
Kisik Song, Sungjoo Lee*
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14. Methodology(8/8) Step 4) Evaluating the ideas Criteria Description
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Methodology(8/8)
Step 4) Evaluating the ideas
Criteria
Description
Modification
Technology growth
Whether the proposed technology has the potential to grow in the market
𝑝 𝑖+1 𝑝 𝑖
( 𝑝 𝑖 : Accumulated patent that combined keyword in i year, i: 2004, 2005, … 2013)
Technology applicability
Whether the proposed technology is applicable to many products; the more technological applications, the higher the technological connection
1− 𝑗 𝑘 𝑝 𝑗 𝑡 ∗ 𝑛 𝑖 𝑛
Note: 𝑝 𝑗 𝑡 is the relative frequency rate of keywords at each theme group t,
𝑛 𝑖 = The number of theme code combined keyword
𝑛 = Total number of theme code
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
Kisik Song, Sungjoo Lee*
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15. Kisik Song, Sungjoo Lee*
The International conference on ICEMM 2015
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
Kisik Song, Sungjoo Lee*
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16. Cumulative number of patent life cycle forecasting
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Case study (2/6)
Step 2) Selecting technology for reference
Option 1
References
Target
3D047
3D246
3D114
3D048
3D045
3D046
0.7217
0.7216
0.6123
0.5892
0.5773
Reference
technologies
Cumulative number of patent
applications
Range of
decision
Technology
life cycle forecasting
3D047
695
98.85%
Saturation
3D246
4,271
93.77%
3D114
1,079
96.16%
3D048
1,465
90.08%
3D045
270
96.42%
Option 2(x)
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
Kisik Song, Sungjoo Lee*
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17. Kisik Song, Sungjoo Lee*
The International conference on ICEMM 2015
Case study (3/6)
Step 3) Deriving new technology ideas – based on TA 𝑖 level
After step 2), we derived 3D047 as the TCU using option 1
We extracted the TA 𝑖 of 3D047 and combined target technology; 3D046 with technology for combination unit; and the TA 𝑖 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
Kisik Song, Sungjoo Lee*
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18. Kisik Song, Sungjoo Lee*
The International conference on ICEMM 2015
Case study (4/6)
Step 3) Deriving new technology ideas – based on TA 𝑖 (𝑗) level
We extracted TA 𝑖 (𝑗) in TA 𝑖, such as “transmission” and “control,” which are both commonly used in 3D046 and 3D047, and combined them
Kisik Song, Sungjoo Lee*
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19. Kisik Song, Sungjoo Lee*
The International conference on ICEMM 2015
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
Control with constant transmission of force and pressure
It can be the braking force whose pressure of delivery is constant by the force distribution through the transfer control unit
Control with variable transmission of force and pressure
It can be the braking force whose pressure of delivery 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
Kisik Song, Sungjoo Lee*
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20. Kisik Song, Sungjoo Lee*
The International conference on ICEMM 2015
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
Kisik Song, Sungjoo Lee*
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21. Kisik Song, Sungjoo Lee*
The International conference on ICEMM 2015
Conclusion
Contribution
Unlike existing studies, this study investigated technical units in detail and combined them using the F-term classification system
Combining technologies within the same industry can be useful for ideas to avoid patent infringement from competitors
Since the rate of utilization is also increasing every year, F-term-based methodologies are expected to increase gradually
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 assessment
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
Kisik Song, Sungjoo Lee*
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22. Thank you
Q&A.