Patent ID: 7433884

Claim:
A computer-implemented method of identifying potential licensees for a portfolio of source patents, the method comprising: (a) providing a database that includes: (i) the portfolio of source patents, (ii) a set of patents that are neighbor patents with respect to the portfolio of source patents, and (iii) a table that defines the neighbor relationships between the portfolio of source patents and the set of neighbor patents, wherein the table further includes a strength value for each of the neighbor relationships that is determined based on a weighting scheme that assigns weights to each referencing path which decrease with the number of generations between source and neighbor patents, the strength value being the sum of the weights; (b) querying the database with a search term of interest that exists in at least one of the patents in the database; and (c) outputting a result set based on the query that identifies potential licensees for the portfolio of source patents.