The analysis and presentation of patents to support engineering design

Vasantha, Gokula; Corney, Jonathan; Maclachlan, Ross; Wodehouse, Andrew

Abstract

This paper explores the role of patents in engineering design, and how the extraction and presentation of patent data could be improved for designers. We propose the use of crowdsourcing as a means to post tasks online for a crowd of people to participate and complete. The issues of assessment, searching, clustering and knowledge transfer are evaluated with respect to the literature. Opportunities for potential crowd intervention are then discussed, before the presentation of two initial studies. These related to the categorization and interpretation of patents respectively using an online platform. The initial results establish basic crowd capabilities in understanding patent text and interpreting patent drawings. This has shown that reasonable results can be achieved if tasks of appropriate duration and complexity are set, and if test questions are incorporated to ensure a basic level of understanding exists in the workers.

Citation

Vasantha, G., Corney, J., Maclachlan, R., & Wodehouse, A. (2017). The analysis and presentation of patents to support engineering design. In Design Computing and Cognition '16 (209-226). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44989-0_12

• Conference Name: 7th International Conference on Design Computing and Cognition
• Conference Location: Evanston (Chicago), United States
• Start Date: Jun 25, 2016
• End Date: Jun 29, 2016
• Acceptance Date: Apr 14, 2016
• Online Publication Date: Jan 3, 2017
• Publication Date: 2017
• Deposit Date: Dec 21, 2018
• Publisher: Springer
• Pages: 209-226
• Book Title: Design Computing and Cognition '16
• ISBN: 9783319449883
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44989-0_12
• Keywords: Quality Function Deployment, Test Question, Patent Document, Patent Information, Engineering Design Process
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/1393656