From Static Textual Display of Patents to Graphical Interactions

Abstract

Increasingly, visualisation is becoming a crucial part of patent search and analysis tools. Due to the benefits for accessing and presenting large amounts of data quickly, it is highly relevant for common tasks in the intellectual property domain. Graphical representations become an even more powerful instrument by adding interactive methods allowing for the user-guided-change of perspectives and the exploration of the presented information. A close integration of interactive visualisation into search and analysis cycles can leverage seamless search and analysis environments, as proposed for similar tasks in the relatively new research field of visual analytics. This chapter proposes such a visual analytics approach for the intellectual property domain. One possible way to accomplish this integration is shown on the basis of the research software prototype Pat Viz. The chapter contains a discussion of the benefits as well as the difficulties arising through the realisation of such a system as well as an outlook on how the methods can be exploited for collaboration tasks.