A Function-Behaviour Oriented Search for Patent Digging

Abstract

Patents are an important source of technical knowledge which is increasing its fundamental role in supporting design activity. Analogical thinking, for example, is based on a fruitful and previously unnoticed analogy with an existing solution and patent in another area. Patents reveal solutions to technical problems, and they represent an inexhaustible source of information: more than 80 percent of man’s technical knowledge is described in patent literature [1]. Therefore automation of systems for patent retrieval, especially for commercial use, is in great demand. Manual extraction of desired patents is very costly and time consuming. This article proposes an inventive procedure to create a thesaurus, identifying the pool of keywords related to a given product based on a combination of creativity methods and a pre-built thesaurus of physical effects. Keywords are classified into a hierarchical tree diagram according to the FBS Function/Behaviour/Structure classification [2]. This classification, called KOM® - Knowledge Organizing Module [3], can be used for building a state of the art, problem solving activity support, carrying out technological transfer and forecasting activities. In this work, the algorithm for automatic patent digging aimed at building the state of the art of a system or of a technology is presented. Novel and key points are widely illustrated in this paper, together with an explanatory case study.

Innovation through Pertinent Patents Research based on Physical Phenomena Involved

“…The tool, "TrendPerceptor" [12] is based on this method. TechTrees: [8] Thesaurus: [15] Level of Invention (LOI): [9] Problem Solving: [30] Innovation generation: [4] Idea generation: [30] New product development/design: [5], [6], [7], [13], [24] Technological transfer/Technology transferability: [4], [13], [14], [15], [21] Product comparison/ Similar products: [4], [17], [30] Avoid patent infringement: [20] Knowledge sharing/ extraction: [15], [16] Prior art searches: [14], [15], [16] Ontologies [e.g. Function-Behavior-Structure (FBS)] are used by Russo and Montecchi [13,14,15].…”

A new method for extracting knowledge from patents to inspire designers during the problem-solving phase

“…Yoon and Park 2004); they are a potential source of knowledge location, and they contain a large quantity of technical information not available elsewhere (Fantoni et al 2013). Their fundamental role of supporting design activities has been extended and they now provide existing design solutions to various problems; they are also an important source of technical knowledge (Russo and Montecchi 2011b).…”

“…For instance, in the context of New Product Development (NPD), Fantoni et al (2013) propose a tool to accelerate and facilitate human analysis of the large corpus of patent documents. Another relevant example in a problem solving context is the modified FBS ontology proposed by Russo and Montecchi (2011b). Their ontology is called 'FB-Ph-S'; it is composed of the Function (systems main function), the behaviour (sequential change of states), the physical effects (transition from one state to another) and the structure (description of the systems behaviour and its relations).…”

“…Nevertheless, in the context of problem solving, it is essential to take into account technical and physical aspects in order to build a more exhaustive keyword database and therefore more relevant searches. In this regard, the approach of Russo and Montecchi (2011b) is relevant since they consider not only keywords related to the main function of the studied system, but also physical keywords. Through three creativity approaches (Linguistic -semantic relations; Engineering -TRIZ inventive solutions; Multi-visional -abstract vision of the problem) they target pertinent keywords to search for patents effectively.…”

Automatic extraction of function–behaviour–state information from patents

“…Both Chakrabarti [21] and Russo [22] introduced also the Physical Effects in the view. In our opinion a Physical Effect is (theoretically) a property while its manifestations are instead behaviours and so its definition is redundant with respect to the FBS approach.…”