An R&D knowledge management method for patent document summarization
| Pages | 245-257 |
| Date | 14 March 2008 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/02635570810847608 |
| Published date | 14 March 2008 |
| Author | Amy J.C. Trappey,Charles V. Trappey |
| Subject Matter | Economics,Information & knowledge management,Management science & operations |
An R&D knowledge management
method for patent document
summarization
Amy J.C. Trappey
Department of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management,
National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan, and
Charles V. Trappey
Department of Management Science, National Chiao Tung University,
Hsinchu, Taiwan
Abstract
Purpose – In an era of rapidly expanding digital content, the number of e-documents and the amount
of knowledge frequently overwhelm the R&D teams and often impede intellectual property
management. The purpose of this paper is to develop an automatic patent summarization method for
accurate knowledge abstraction and effective R&D knowledge management.
Design/methodology/approach – This paper develops an integrated approach for automatic
patent summary generation combining the concepts of key phrase recognition and significant
information density. Significant information density is defined based on the domain-specific key
concepts/phrases, relevant phrases, title phrases, indicator phrases and topic sentences of a given
patent document.
Findings – The document compression ratio and the knowledge retention ratio are used to measure
both quantitative and qualitative outcomes of the new summarization methodology. Both
measurements indicate the significant benefits and superior results of the method.
Research limitations/implications – In order to implement the methodology with practical
success, the accurate and efficient pre-processing of identifying key concepts and relevant phrases of
patent documents is required. The approach relies on a powerful text-mining engine as the pre-process
module for key phrase extraction.
Practical implications – The methodology helps R&D companies consistently and automatically
process, extract and summarize the core knowledge of related patent documents. This enabling
technology is critical to R&D companies when they are competing to create new technologies and
products for short life cycle marketplaces.
Originality/value – This research addresses a new perspective in R&D knowledge management,
particularly in solving the knowledge-overloading issue. The methodology helps R&D collaborative
teams consistently to summarize the core knowledge of patent documents with efficiency. Efficient
R&D knowledge management helps the firm to take advantage of IP positioning while avoiding patent
conflict and infringement.
Keywords Document handling,Knowledge management, Informationmanagement,
Intellectualproperty
Paper type Research paper
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0263-5577.htm
This research was partially supported by Taiwan National Science Council and Ministry of
Economic Affairs research grants. The authors also wish to acknowledge Mr Burges H.S. Kao’s
technical support in prototyping and testing the summarization algorithm.
R&D knowledge
management
method
245
Received 29 July 2007
Revised 24 September 2007
Accepted 9 October 2007
Industrial Management & Data
Systems
Vol. 108 No. 2, 2008
pp. 245-257
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0263-5577
DOI 10.1108/02635570810847608
To continue reading
Request your trial