Patent trawler aims to predict next hot technologies
July 9, 2012 | Source: New Scientist
Two-dimensional representation of patent similarity structure in National Bureau of Economic Research subcategory 11 (Agriculture, Food, Textiles). The colors encode the U.S. patent classes: red corresponds to class 8; green: 19; blue: 71; magenta: 127; yellow: 442; cyan: 504. (credit: Péter Érdi et al.)
A new tool automatically helps forecast emerging technologies, thanks to an innovative data-mining technique.
Developed by Péter Érdi at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest and colleagues, it works by analyzing the frequency with which prior-art (previous patents) are cited by other patents.
Plotting how the frequency of these citations changes over time shows that patents can be grouped into related clusters. These clusters evolve, sometimes branching into new disciplines, sometimes merging with one another.
Érdi’s team has written software that charts this evolution and helps predict whether existing technological fields can combine or diverge to create new areas of innovation.
Comments (4)
by Neil Craig
I find that a beautiful picture.
Having long been interested in how prizes rather than conventional science funding work I would be interested in seeing patents won by prize winners, such as the Darpa automated car prize or the ASnsari spaeship prize, appear in such a diagram.
That we are not only making new discoveries but now starting to learn how the process of making new discoveries works, and thus how it could be encouraged is a 2nd order of progress. I doubt if there are enough prizes won yet but it would be interesting to see patents which won prizes, or were involved in winning prizes, were placed. If prizes are as useful as I think we would expect them to form the longest extensions from the main body of knowledge.
by Bri
Sure looks that way to me. Just think, if robots are given rights, then the richest person on the planet could be an AI. Talk about winning Jeopardy!!!
by Gorden Russell
RK will figure out how to accelerate progress out of this.
by {i}Pan~
Does this mean RK is out of a job? ;)