Framework of populace survey-enabled design patent map systems

Patent deployment has become competition strength for companies. The intelligence property can keep the competition advantage of a company from opponents through the patent deployment which can be visualized by the patent map. Design patent map is an important strategic tool for establishing design strategies. Our past efforts studied the display techniques in design patent map, and the comparisons of design patents in United States and Taiwan. Of types of patents, design patents occupy a unique patent field, since design patents are not as definitive as other patent fields. Therefore, the construction of design patent map is extremely difficult. In this paper, we focus on the implementation of a design patent map system, which can be used to collect populace opinion on comparisons of the design patents. Our proposed framework for the design patent map systems consists of a dissimilarity collector, a patent database, a patent map visualization engine, a rendering tool, and a set of interface components. Hence, their functional integration fulfills both the populace survey and the automation of generating up-to-date patent maps. After prototype and demonstration, the proposed framework is able to offer an easy-to-use design patent map system to collect populace opinions and display design patent maps on web environments.