Design Assistant for Semantic Comparison of Intellectual Property (DASCIP)

A design tool will be developed that highlights potential patent infringement of an emerging design will help to steer that design towards a novel solution as well as avoid costly litigation. We will focus on mechanical engineering designs where the novel inventive step relies heavily upon how functions and key geometrical features of the design interact. We describe these types of application as where function-geometry inventive principles, and hence related patent images, play an important role.

Current patent retrieval systems only employ text-based search methods and there is a need for image-based semantic search approaches to be developed for designers to use. Functional representations, which are typically schematic design diagrams showing the relationship of functions and effects between elements of a design, are a form of semantics and are used by some commercial innovation systems but not for patent comparison. In addition, functional representations have not been extensively applied to designs that rely on novel geometric features.

Existing functional representations will be evaluated to assess the extent they can be used as a graphical design description for use in patent search. Ontology and semantic descriptors will be developed for use with the defined 'function-geometry' inventive principles, common in mechanical engineering design, in order to compare an emerging design with relevant patents. A database will be created of product design and machine design patents in the target manufacturing field. A CAD system will be adapted to store internal model annotations of the emerging design that express the design intent and also develop a description of the function-geometry interaction, aided by the ontology and semantics developed for this purpose. The patent database will be searched for comparison with the emerging design based primarily on text and symbol annotations of the original patent images plus, where relevant, a functional representation of the design depicted in the patent. The patent infringement due to particular design features, statistically quantified, will be depicted in a visualisation superimposed on the emerging design. In this way, the designer will be supported to create innovative solutions that avoid patent infringement.

The potential beneficiaries of this project may be grouped into the following categories, Designers, Companies, Economic and Societal:

Designers will become more aware of the novelty of their design earlier in the process, as the proposed design tool will highlight how the emerging design sits in relation to the prior art. This increased patent awareness will also benefit their creativity with associated benefits to society in terms of better products. Any potential patent infringement will be highlighted early thus enabling avoiding action to be taken before downstream resources are committed. 21% of more than 2 million worldwide annual patent applications are classified as in mechanical engineering [1].

For companies patented designs have an increasing important role in determining business strategy and supporting technological decisions. Companies also need to assess the potential infringement risks before investing in new product development, as there can be considerable financial costs of litigation. At least 24% of companies experienced an Intellectual Property (IP) dispute over the past 5 years; damages were agreed in 30% of cases and averaged £75k-£115k [1]. Equipping design teams with the proposed design assistant tool will widen the awareness of potential patent infringement and help to avoid such costly litigation. For an SME, increasing the awareness of the designer to potential patent opportunities and infringement will help to disperse monopoly power often held by the large companies and hence promotes competition. One further benefit is that if patent attorneys receive higher quality design descriptions from their clients then they will be relieved of some of the laborious manual task of analysing patent documents.

Boosting the economy relies heavily on innovation and in the broadest sense, there will be considerable economic impact from stimulating a greater number and quality of patents, as world-wide patent applications are growing 9% year-on-year to an annual total of around 2.6 million; the UK is in 7th position behind China, the USA, Germany, Japan, Republic of Korea and France for patent applications in 2013, however there is a shift of growth towards Asia [2]. The 2013 Foresight report 'The Future of Manufacturing' states ([3], p117) that "Here once again the UK is considerably behind its major competitors in patenting ...". Logically, innovation will be boosted by improving the process of generating good quality patent applications that will derive from the proposed research. Patents are increasingly internationalised entities meaning that legal challenges may be made on technological sectors of the UK economy from any part of the World. R&D policy makers will benefit from better design tools that help to meet trends in technology and avoid potential threats to the UK economy.

Society will benefit in terms of more consumer choice if patentees are more likely to legally share their ideas [1]. To this end, improving the patent litigation awareness of designers through the proposed design assistant will help to promote more local resolution of patent disputes where the company with the emerging design may be more likely to settle for a licence fee through awareness flagged at the design stage rather than litigation that pops up downstream. Add to this the growing trend for open innovation and the growth of crowd-sourcing/mass collaboration as vehicles for a growing culture of DIY design-oriented entrepreneurs, and a computer design assistant for patent awareness will lead to more competition and greater consumer choice.

[1] Weatherall, K., Webster, E., (2014) Journal of Economic Surveys 28(2):312-343.
[2] World Intellectual Property Organisation, www.wipo.int/ipstats - accessed 16/04/15.
[3] HM Government Office for Science (2013) The Future of Manufacturing: a new era of opportunity and challenge for the UK.