Visual Exploration of Patent Collections with IPC Clouds
Dominik Herr, Qi Han, Steffen Lohmann, Sören Brügmann, Thomas Ertl · 2014
The International Patent Classification (IPC) is the most widely used system for the classification of patents. It is in-dispensable in patent retrieval, as it allows to filter patents by their IPC classes, groups, and subgroups. However, the selection of appropriate IPC symbols can be challenging and there is the risk that important patents are overlooked be-cause relevant IPC symbols are not considered in the search. Therefore, the identification of appropriate IPC symbols is a crucial activity in patent retrieval that could significantly benefit from better IT support. This paper introduces IPC clouds, an interactive visualization technique that shows the relatedness of IPC symbols based on their co-use in the patent data. In contrast to the IPC hierarchy, IPC clouds allow to dynamically explore the IPC space while taking into account how the IPC symbols are actually used in the patent data. They provide an alternative view on the IPC system and assist in identifying relevant IPC symbols and associated patents. The general visualization technique is not limited to the IPC system but can also be applied to