Discovering new technology opportunities based on patents: Text-mining and F-term analysis

In the approach, we first choose a target technology for seeking new opportunities. Then, from the text-mining results of the F-term data, we identify other technologies with technical attributes similar to the target technology, called reference technologies. The next step is to extract technical attributes that are commonly used in the reference technologies but have not been used in the target technology. Finally, we can obtain new technology ideas by applying these technical attributes to the target technologies. This is one of the earliest attempts to adopt the F-term for patent analysis; the proposed methodology can show how to best take advantage of the F-term and the wealth of available technical information in patents, and also can be useful in the idea-creation process for major and minor innovation.