Computer supported ontology-based patent analysis considering business processes and strategic patent portfolio management

Two approaches are frequently used to study the critical technology and market trends of industry. One analyzes the business processes from the market perspective with statistics market survey. The other perspective predicts new technologies from the patent (intellectual property) data. Business process analysis is limited to analyzing existing technologies and market applications. Since the service delivery processes are not frequently linked to the intellectual property of the underlying technologies, applying a patent perspective enables the analysis of technology trends, technology ownership, and royalty payment analysis. These data are used to illustrate the technology life cycles, predict emerging trends, and identify research opportunities with Computer Supported tools. Patent analysis enables the predictions of technology trends but poorly links the technology to actual products for market adoption cause of the large amount of the data. This research develops an innovative computer supported approach for technology analysis combining both market and patent perspectives. The business processes of a given knowledge domain, driven by the market perspective, is analyzed to build the basis of the domain's ontology. Afterward, the key phrases of the business processes are added to form the ontology schema. The related patents are then systematically linked to the business process schema nodes. The research approach enables the business process-oriented patent portfolios among current and potential competitors to be mapped and critically compared from both market performance and technology ownership perspectives. The methodology allows in-depth integrated views of rivals' patenting and business development for strategic R&D management. The case of InvisalignTM innovative orthodontic services and the patent portfolio is studied to demonstrate the proposed methodology.