Building potential patent portfolios： An integrated approach based on topic identification and correlation analysis

Purpose： This paper suggests a framework to identify important patents for building potential patent portfolios based on patents owned by different assignees so as to highlight the value of individual patents in technology transfer and identify potential collaborators for patent assignees. Design/methodology/approach： The analysis framework includes the following steps： l） co-classification analysis based on the International Patent Classification （IPC） codes and Derwent Manual Codes （DMC） to detect sub-tech fields, 2） keyword co-occurrence analysis aiming to understand the core technology information in each patent, and 3） social network analysis used for identifying important technologies and partnerships of key assignees. A case study was conducted with 27,401 chemistry patents filed by a Chinese national research institute. Findings： The results show that this framework is effective in building potential technological patent portfolios based on patents owned by different assignees and identifying future collaborators for the assignees. This integrated approach based on topic identification and correlation analysis that combines network-based analysis with keyword-based analysis can reveal important patented technologies and their connections and help understand detailed technological information mentioned in patents. Research limitations： In keywords analysis, only titles and abstracts of patent documents were used and weights of keywords in different parts of the documents were not considered.Practical implications： The analysis framework provides valuable information for decision- makers of large institutions which have many patents with broad application prospects. Originality/value： Different from previous patent portfolio studies based on the use of a combination of patent analysis indicators, this study provides insights into a method of building patent portfolios to discover the potential of individual patents in technology transfer and promote cooperation among different patent assignees.