Patent analysis
Patent analysis (or patent analytics) is a policy and decision-making support tool which uses information included in patent documents and other information from the patent lifecycle (patent information) to identify technology and patenting trends, and is a major form of intellectual property. Other terms used as synonyms to patent analytics is patent landscaping, patent mapping, cartography, while there are challenges and no harmonized terminology in different languages, including French and Spanish, while in some languages such as Russian terms are borrowed from other languages (e.g. the German term “Patentlandschaften” in Russian). As a professional field that is  growing in importance, patent analytics encompasses the analysis of patent data, analysis of the scientific literature, data cleaning, text mining, machine learning, geographic mapping, and data visualisation. As a tool, patent analytics is broadly used in industry and increasingly explored by the public sector to take informed decisions related to prioritization and investments in R&D, IP portfolio management, commercialization of technology, and research collaborations among others. Patent analysis tools and methods have traditionally been done using spreadsheet-based data analysis methods. More recently, the field of intellectual property has witnessed a convergence of traditional patent analytics with data science, machine  learning, semantic technologies, and artificial intelligence along with a surge in available tools that are being applied to patent visualization. There has also been an increase in open-source software and tools being used for patent analytics, as well as the use of techniques, such as machine learning, for different tasks. Some tools propose semi-automated production of visualizations, dashboards or reports. Patent Landscape Reports. Patent landscape reports (PLRs) are the best known patent analytics products. They are produced for users in Industry as a decision making mechanism (patent portfolio management, R&D investment and prioritisation, technology transfer, etc.). Such reports  are typically confidential and not publicly available. They are costly and commissioned or developed to support specific decision-making processes and are considered business intelligence. In the public sector, the providers of patent landscape reports are the national patent offices or research institutes that prepare reports on subjects of general interest, for a specific need, or to provide landscaping services to the public. Patent landscape reports are used by the public sector to raise awareness, with public institutions increasingly finding ways to facilitate and validate their policy decisions in ways that are similar to private sector decisions. Some public and  private entities make patent landscape reports or patent analytics reports publicly available, including patent offices. An example of a searchable database of such reports is World Intellectual Property Organization's PATENTSCOPE database that facilitates Patent Landscape Reports by Other Organizations. One or several state of the art or prior art patent search reports form the basis of these patent landscape reports. Different fields of patent documents and other structured information are analyzed using statistical, analytical, and comparative methods to identify patterns, understand IP strategies and trends in technology areas in question. The results of the analysis are presented using a  combination of narrative and different type of visualizations. Patent Landscape Reports are sometimes confused with different products serving different purposes, such as a Freedom to Operate (FTO) analysis which has a different scope and is based on an FTO search; technology bulletins, technology watches/technology alerts, or even specific type of visualizations. Patent analysis methodology. There are currently very few methodological resources describing the steps and tasks involved in patent analytics. Typically patent analytics teams work with R&D departments, patent attorneys, with related information feeding into IP, corporate and business strategy decisions. In general, patent analytics and patent landscape report  creation involves the following stages: Patent analytics is an iterative process which often requires rescoping of the project and adaptation based on the findings during the process. There are different tools which can be used for analytics, some embedded in patent databases, others more general data manipulation, visualization and analytics tools, including commercial and open source tools.