Interrelating Products through Properties via Patent Analysis

TRIZ emerged from systematic analysis of patents, a process involving the mapping of innovative patents to extracted generic problems and generic inventive principles. During problem solving, TRIZ users, relying on their TRIZ skills, map their specific problem to a generic problem, solve it via TRIZ tools, and map back to a specific solution. A methodology and algorithm are proposed that, through identification of specific word categories in patents, analysis of term-term correlation data, and data mining techniques, automatically identify similar products, and properties relating or differentiating products. This algorithm can quantifiably guide creativity efforts and aid in patent portfolio management.