Information processing system, information processing method, and program

Abstract

It will be possible to evaluate the value of patents. [Solution] An information processing system comprising a keyword extraction unit that extracts keywords from claims related to the patent to be verified, a search unit that searches for information related to businesses or products that match the extracted keywords, an infringement determination unit that estimates the degree to which the searched information about the businesses or products is likely to satisfy the constituent elements of the claims, and a value assessment unit that evaluates the value of the patent according to the degree.

Description

[Technical Field]

[0001] The present invention relates to an information processing system, an information processing method, and a program. [Background technology]

[0002] The value of the patent is being evaluated (see Patent Document 1). [Prior art documents] [Patent documents]

[0003] [Patent Document 1] Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2024-067556 Summary of the Invention [Problem to be solved by the invention]

[0004] However, it is difficult to collect similar cases using the market approach described in Patent Document 1.

[0005] The present invention has been made in view of the above background, and aims to provide a technique that can evaluate the value of a patent. [Means for solving the problem]

[0006] The main invention of the present invention for solving the above problem is an information processing system comprising: a keyword extraction unit that extracts keywords from claims related to a patent to be verified; a search unit that searches for information related to businesses or products that match the extracted keywords; an infringement determination unit that estimates the degree to which the information related to the business or product found is likely to satisfy the constituent elements of the claim; and a value assessment unit that evaluates the value of the patent according to the degree.

[0007] Other problems and solutions disclosed in this application will be made clear in the section on preferred embodiments of the invention and the drawings. [Effects of the Invention]

[0008] According to the present invention, it is possible to perform a patent value evaluation. [Brief explanation of the drawings]

[0009] [Figure 1] FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating an example of the overall configuration of an information processing system. [Figure 2] FIG. 2 illustrates an example of a hardware configuration of a management server 2. [Figure 3] FIG. 2 illustrates an example of the software configuration of a management server 2. [Figure 4] FIG. 10 is a diagram illustrating the operation of the management server 2. DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0010] <System Overview> An information processing system according to an embodiment of the present invention will be described below.

[0011] 1 is a diagram showing an example of the overall configuration of an information processing system. The information processing system of this embodiment is configured to include a management server 2. The management server 2 is communicably connected to a user terminal 1 via a communication network. The communication network is, for example, the Internet, and is constructed using a public telephone network, a mobile phone network, a wireless communication path, Ethernet (registered trademark), etc.

[0012] The user terminal 1 is a computer operated by a user, and may be, for example, a smartphone, a tablet computer, or a personal computer.

[0013] The management server 2 may be a general-purpose computer such as a workstation or a personal computer, or may be logically realized by cloud computing.

[0014] <Administration Server> FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating an example of the hardware configuration of the management server 2. Note that the illustrated configuration is an example, and other configurations may also be used. The management server 2 includes a CPU 201, a memory 202, a storage device 203, a communication interface 204, an input device 205, and an output device 206. The storage device 203 stores various data and programs, and is, for example, a hard disk drive, a solid state drive, or a flash memory. The communication interface 204 is an interface for connecting to a communication network, and is, for example, an adapter for connecting to Ethernet (registered trademark), a modem for connecting to a public telephone network, a wireless communication device for wireless communication, or a USB (Universal Serial Bus) connector or an RS232C connector for serial communication. The input device 205 is used to input data, and is, for example, a keyboard, a mouse, a touch panel, a button, a microphone, or the like. The output device 206 is used to output data, and is, for example, a display, a printer, a speaker, or the like. Each functional unit of the management server 2 described below is realized by the CPU 201 reading a program stored in the storage device 203 into the memory 202 and executing it, and each storage unit of the management server 2 is realized as part of the storage area provided by the memory 202 and the storage device 203.

[0015] 3 is a diagram showing an example of the software configuration of the management server 2. The management server 2 includes a patent information acquisition unit 211, a keyword extraction unit 212, a search unit 213, an infringement determination unit 214, and a value assessment unit 215.

[0016] The patent information acquisition unit 211 acquires information indicating the contents of the target patent (hereinafter referred to as patent information). The patent information includes at least the contents of the claims. The contents of the claims may be, for example, text data, rich text data, HTML data, etc. The patent information may be, for example, an XML file or PDF file of a patent publication. The patent information acquisition unit 211 may be configured to accept input of patent information from a user, or to accept input of information identifying a patent, such as a patent number, from a user and download the patent publication of the patent identified by the accepted information from a patent information database, etc.

[0017] The keyword extraction unit 212 extracts keywords from the claims of the target patent. For example, the keyword extraction unit 212 can generate keywords by providing a prompt including the text of the claim and an instruction to extract keywords from the claim to a large-scale language model. For example, the keyword extraction unit 212 can divide the claim into morphemes using morphological analysis or the like, and extract nouns, proper nouns, verbs, etc. from the morphemes as keywords. Note that the keywords may be phrases (keyphrases).

[0018] The search unit 213 searches for information about businesses or products that match the keywords extracted by the keyword extraction unit 212. The search unit 213 can perform the search by determining whether information about the business activities of a business or information about products matches the keywords. In this embodiment, the information about businesses or products is assumed to be a web page. The search unit 213 can obtain search results for web pages related to businesses or products by, for example, sending a search request to a search engine specifying the keywords extracted by the keyword extraction unit 212 as AND conditions or OR conditions.

[0019] The search unit 213 can also index web pages collected in advance and use the index to perform searches. Specifically, a crawler program periodically collects web pages, and creates an index by dividing the text contained in the collected web pages using morphological analysis or the like. The search unit 213 can then identify web pages containing the keywords extracted by the keyword extraction unit 212 by comparing the keywords with the index. This method allows searches to be performed using a unique index without using a search engine, thereby increasing the degree of freedom in searches.

[0020] The search unit 213 can also acquire web pages in advance using a crawler or the like, vectorize all or part of the acquired web pages through embedding processing, and store the vectors in the vector storage unit in association with the web pages. In this case, the search unit 213 can identify web pages corresponding to keywords according to the distance between the vectors embedded with the keywords extracted by the keyword extraction unit 212 and the vectors stored in the vector storage unit.

[0021] The search unit 213 can detect business names and product names from the searched web pages. The search unit 213 may generate business names and product names by providing a prompt including the content of the searched web pages and an instruction to extract what appear to be business names and / or product names to the large-scale language model.

[0022] The keyword extraction process by the keyword extraction unit 212 and the business or product search process by the search unit 213 may be repeated multiple times until an end instruction is received from the user.

[0023] The infringement determination unit 214 determines whether the searched information related to the business or product (for example, the contents of a web page) satisfies the constituent elements described in the claims. The infringement determination unit 214 can determine whether the constituent elements are satisfied by providing the large-scale language model with a prompt including the information related to the business or product, the claim, and an instruction to determine whether the information satisfies the constituent elements.

[0024] The infringement determination unit 214 can also break down the constituent features of claims into rules in advance and determine whether information related to businesses or products satisfies those rules. Specifically, the constituent features of claims are broken down into keywords and phrases, and rules are created that express combinations of those keywords and phrases using AND or OR conditions. The infringement determination unit 215 then performs natural language processing on the information related to businesses or products to extract keywords and phrases, and determines whether the extracted keywords and phrases satisfy the rules. This method allows infringement determination to be made based on rules that systematically express the constituent features of claims without using a large-scale language model.

[0025] The infringement determination unit 215 may determine the degree of likelihood that the searched information related to the business or product (e.g., the contents of a web page) satisfies the constituent features described in the claims. In this case, the infringement determination unit 215 may use a large-scale language model to provide a prompt including the information related to the business or product, the claim, and an inquiry about the degree of likelihood that the information satisfies the constituent features, thereby allowing the large-scale language model to estimate the degree to which the constituent features are satisfied.

[0026] In addition, even in the method using the above-mentioned rules, the infringement determination unit 215 can determine the degree of possibility of satisfying the constituent elements based on the extent to which the information related to the business or product satisfies the rules. For example, it can be determined that the higher the proportion of keywords or phrases that make up the rules that are included in the information related to the business or product, the more likely it is that the constituent elements will be satisfied.

[0027] The value assessment unit 215 assesses the value of the patent according to the number of businesses or products determined to satisfy the constituent requirements, or the aggregate value (e.g., total value, maximum value, etc.) of the degree of likelihood that the estimated businesses or products will satisfy the constituent requirements. For example, the value assessment unit 215 can determine an assessment value such that the greater the number of businesses or products determined to satisfy the constituent requirements, the higher the assessment. For example, the value assessment unit 215 can determine an assessment value such that the greater the aggregate value of the degree of likelihood that the constituent requirements will be satisfied, the higher the assessment.

[0028] The value evaluation unit 215 may evaluate the value of a patent based on the sales of businesses or products determined to satisfy the constituent elements, or businesses or products whose likelihood of satisfying the constituent elements is equal to or greater than a predetermined value. In this case, the value evaluation unit 215 may use a web search to search for the sales of businesses or products. The value evaluation unit 215 may also provide a prompt including a designation of a business or product and a question about the sales of the business or product to a large-scale language model to estimate the sales of the business or product. The value evaluation unit 215 may also inquire of a user about the sales of the business or product and accept input of the sales amount (or its estimated value) from the user. The value evaluation unit 215 may use an amount obtained by multiplying the aggregated value (e.g., the total value) of sales of businesses or products determined to satisfy the constituent elements by a predetermined license fee rate (which may be a fixed value, such as 3%, or a rate that varies depending on the business field to which the business or product belongs), or a rank corresponding to this amount, as the evaluation value. Furthermore, the value evaluation unit 215 may use, as an evaluation value, an expected value obtained by multiplying the aggregated value (e.g., total value) of sales related to businesses or products determined to have a degree of possibility of satisfying the constituent elements equal to or greater than a predetermined value by the degree of possibility (e.g., expressed as a percentage) and a license fee rate (which may be a fixed value such as 3%, or a rate that varies depending on the business field to which the business or product belongs), or a rank corresponding to this expected value. Note that, if the sales are sales for one year, the value evaluation unit 215 may multiply the sales by the number of years corresponding to the duration of the target patent. Furthermore, when the value evaluation unit 215 obtains sales for multiple years in the past, if there is a trend of sales increasing or decreasing, the value evaluation unit 215 may perform sales forecasts for the number of years corresponding to the duration of the target patent according to the trend, and total the forecast results.

[0029] <Operation> FIG. 4 is a diagram illustrating the operation of the management server 2.

[0030] The management server 2 receives the designation of the target patent (S301), acquires the claims of the target patent (S302), extracts keywords contained in the claims (S303), performs a web search using the extracted keywords (S304), and outputs the search results (S305). The management server 2 inquires whether the user is satisfied with the search results, and if the user is not satisfied (S307: NO), repeats the process from step S302. If the user is satisfied (S306: YES), the management server 2 determines the likelihood that each web page in the search results satisfies the claims (S307), acquires the sales of businesses or products related to the web page (S308), and totals the expected values ​​obtained by multiplying the sales by the likelihood to assess the value of the patent (S309).

[0031] As described above, the information processing system of this embodiment can evaluate the value of a patent.

[0032] Although the present embodiment has been described above, the above embodiment is intended to facilitate understanding of the present invention and is not intended to limit the present invention. The present invention may be modified or improved without departing from the spirit thereof, and equivalents thereof are also included in the present invention.

[0033] For example, the processing by each of the functional units of the management server 2 described above may be performed by any of the functional units. Also, a different functional unit that performs part of the processing by each of the functional units described above may be added. Also, the functional units of the management server 2 may be distributed across multiple computers.

[0034] Furthermore, the information stored in each storage unit of the management server 2 may be stored in any of the storage units. That is, the information stored in the above-mentioned multiple storage units may be stored in one storage unit, or part of the information stored in one of the above-mentioned storage units may be stored in another storage unit.

[0035] <Disclosures> The present disclosure also includes the following configurations. [Item 1] a keyword extraction unit that extracts keywords from claims of a patent to be verified; a search unit that searches for information about businesses or products that match the extracted keywords; an infringement determination unit that estimates the likelihood that the searched information regarding the business or the product satisfies the constituent features of the claim; a value assessment unit that assesses the value of the patent according to the degree; An information processing system comprising: [Item 2] Item 1, an information processing system according to item 1, the infringement determination unit generates the degree by providing a prompt including information about the business entity or product, the claim, and a question about the possibility that the business entity or product satisfies the claim to a large-scale language model; An information processing system characterized by: [Item 3] Item 1, an information processing system according to item 1, the search unit provides the keyword to a search engine to search for information related to the business operator or the product; An information processing system characterized by: [Item 4] Item 1, an information processing system according to item 1, repeating the keyword extraction process by the keyword extraction unit and the search process for the business operator or the product by the search unit multiple times until an end instruction is received from the user; An information processing system characterized by: [Item 5] Item 1, an information processing system according to item 1, the value assessment unit acquires sales of the business operator or the product, and assesses the value of the patent according to the sales and the degree; An information processing system characterized by: [Item 6] extracting keywords from claims of a patent to be verified; A step of searching for information on businesses or products that match the extracted keywords; a step of estimating the likelihood that the information regarding the searched business or product satisfies the constituent features of the claim; assessing the value of the patent according to said degree; An information processing method characterized by being executed by a computer. [Item 7] extracting keywords from claims of a patent to be verified; A step of searching for information on businesses or products that match the extracted keywords; a step of estimating the likelihood that the information regarding the searched business or product satisfies the constituent features of the claim; assessing the value of the patent according to said degree; A program that causes a computer to execute the following. [Explanation of symbols]

[0036] 1. User terminal 2 Management Server

Claims

1. A keyword extraction unit that extracts keywords from claims of a patent to be verified; a search unit that searches for information on businesses or products that match the extracted keywords; an infringement determination unit that estimates the degree of possibility that the searched information on the business operator or the product satisfies the constituent features of the claim; a value evaluation unit that acquires sales of the business operator or the product and evaluates the value of the patent according to the sales and the degree; An information processing system comprising:

2. 2. The information processing system according to claim 1, the infringement determination unit generates the degree by providing a prompt including information about the business entity or the product, the claim, and a question about the possibility that the business entity or the product satisfies the claim to a large-scale language model; An information processing system comprising:

3. 2. The information processing system according to claim 1, the search unit provides the keyword to a search engine to search for information related to the business operator or the product; An information processing system comprising:

4. 2. The information processing system according to claim 1, repeating the process of extracting the keyword by the keyword extraction unit and the process of searching for the business operator or the product by the search unit a plurality of times until an end instruction is received from a user; An information processing system comprising:

5. Extracting keywords from claims of a patent to be verified; A step of searching for information on businesses or products that match the extracted keywords; A step of estimating the degree of possibility that the information on the searched business entity or the product satisfies the constituent features of the claim; obtaining sales of the business operator or the product, and evaluating the value of the patent according to the sales and the degree; An information processing method characterized by being executed by a computer.

6. Extracting keywords from claims of a patent to be verified; A step of searching for information on businesses or products that match the extracted keywords; A step of estimating the degree of possibility that the information on the searched business entity or the product satisfies the constituent features of the claim; obtaining sales of the business operator or the product, and evaluating the value of the patent according to the sales and the degree; A program for causing a computer to execute the following.

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