System , method and computer program product for patent-centric and group-oriented data processing

A system, method, and computer program product for processing data are described herein. The system maintains first databases of patents, and second databases of non-patent information of interest to a corporate entity. The system also maintains one or more groups. Each of the groups comprises any number of the patents from the first databases. The system, upon receiving appropriate operator commands, automatically processes the patents in one of the groups in conjunction with non-patent information from the second databases. Accordingly, the system performs patent-centric and group-oriented processing of data. A group can also include any number of non-patent documents. The groups may be product based, person based, corporate entity based, or user-defined. Other types of groups are also covered, such as temporary groups. The processing automatically performed by the system relates to (but is not limited to) patent mapping, document mapping, patent citation (both forward and backward), patent aging, patent braketing/clustering (both forward and backward), inventor patent count, inventor employment information, patent claim tree analysis, and finance. Other functions and capabilities are also covered, including the ability to utilize hyperbolic trees to visualize data generated by the system, method and computer program product.